iOS 15 reportedly has a much slower adoption rate than iOS 14

iOS 15 was released to the public just three days ago, on September 20, 2021, with a pretty big change of heart in tow - it was the first iOS update ever to be non-compulsory, which allows willing iOS 14 users to, well, remain on iOS 14 for now. Those who opt to remain on iOS 14 for the time being will still receive important security updates.

This has reportedly resulted in a much lower adoption of iOS 15 in the first two days of its availability in comparison with iOS 14. According to analyst research firm Mixpanel, just 8.5% of the users with eligible devices have installed the latest version of iOS, whereas 14.5% of users had iOS 14 installed after the same amount of time last year.

This data isn't official by any means. Apple usually gloats about the massive adoption rate of iOS during its annual WWDC conferences, so it would probably take us a while before we hear anything official on the matter. Despite that, it was mostly clear that the non-compulsory nature of iOS 15 would lead to lowered adoption.

But why is iOS 15 subject to such a dire fate?

To sum things up, iOS 15 isn't a terribly exciting software update. It's mostly an evolutionary update with not that many new features in tow. Aside from the improvements to FaceTime, notification summary, and Focus, the majority of improvements are mostly minor ones. Thus, it's only natural that Apple's newest software release isn't exactly snowballing as its revolutionary predecessor, which introduced widgets and an app drawer of sorts.