iOS 26 Adoption Reportedly Lagging iOS 18 in Same Timeframe, According to StatCounter ⇥ cultofmac.com

Ed Hardy, Cult of Mac:

Nevertheless, iOS 26 adoption is extremely low. Roughly four months after launching in mid-September, only about 15% of iPhone users have some version of the new operating system installed. That’s according to data for January 2026 from StatCounter. Instead, most users hold onto previous versions.

For comparison, in January 2025, about 63% of iPhone users had some iOS 18 version installed. So after roughly the same amount of time, the adoption rate of Apple newest OS was about four times higher.

As far as I can tell, Apple updates its own iOS version stats twice annually — once with summer numbers, and again in the winter. Last year, it updated its stats on January 24, and it indicated 68% of iPhone users who transacted with the App Store on January 21 were using iOS 18. This is pretty close to StatCounter’s 63%. In February 2024, 66% were using the then-newest iOS 17; as Hardy writes, StatCounter reported it was around 54% at the time. A greater gap, to be sure, but it was clear well over half of iPhone users had updated. StatCounter’s figures might be off, but it would be shocking if they were out by 40-plus percent. That would point to a serious measurement error that, somehow, did not impact previous reporting.

Update: Turns out there might actually be large measurement differences that did not impact previous years’ reporting.

Update: Relying on StatCounter’s data could be flawed because Safari and third-party browsers report different iOS version numbers due to a change in iOS 26.