iOS 26 Shows Unusually Slow Adoption Months After Release (macrumors.com)

(Friday January 09, 2026 @11:45AM (msmash) from the liquid-glass-mostly-empty dept.)

Reference: 0180554148
News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/162240/ios-26-shows-unusually-slow-adoption-months-after-release
Source link: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/08/ios-26-shows-unusually-slow-adoption/

Apple's iOS 26 appears to be witnessing the [1]slowest adoption rate in recent memory , with third-party analytics from StatCounter indicating that only 15 to 16% of active iPhones worldwide are running the operating system nearly four months after its September release. The figures stand in stark contrast to iOS 18, which had reached approximately 63% adoption by January 2025, and iOS 17, which hit 54% by January 2024. iOS 16 had surpassed 60% by January 2023.

StatCounter's breakdown for January 2026 shows iOS 26.1 accounting for roughly 10.6% of devices, iOS 26.2 at about 4.6%, and the original iOS 26.0 at 1.1%. More than 60% of iPhones tracked by the analytics firm remain on iOS 18.

MacRumors' own visitor data tells a similar story: 89.3% of the site's readers were on iOS 18 during the first week of January 2025, but only 25.7% are running iOS 26 during the same period this year. iOS 26 introduced Liquid Glass, a sweeping visual redesign that replaces much of the traditional opaque interface with translucent layers, blurred backgrounds, and dynamic depth effects.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/08/ios-26-shows-unusually-slow-adoption/

Correction (Score:2)

by Sebby ( 238625 )

> iOS 26 introduced Liquid Glass, a sweeping visual redesign that replaces much of the traditional opaque interface with translucent layers, blurred backgrounds, and dynamic depth effects.

iOS 26 introduced Liquid Glass, a sweeping visual redesign that replaces much of the traditional opaque interface with pointless translucent layers, blurred backgrounds, and dynamic depth effects.

There FTFY.

I'm on ios18 (Score:2)

by liqu1d ( 4349325 )

I don't even have a notification that there's an updated version available.

Re: I'm on ios18 (Score:2)

by liqu1d ( 4349325 )

Also what happened to 19-25?

They'll correct this low adoption the usual way (Score:2)

by Sebby ( 238625 )

And that way is by only making future security updates available in OS 26 for devices that support it.

So next time there's an important security update that everyone should have, those with a device running OS 18 that is capable of also running OS 26 will only have that security update available as a OS 26 upgrade only, and not available as a point release update for OS 18 for those devices.

Because it's unmitigated crap (Score:2)

by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 )

After my friend installed iOS 26 update on their iPhone 17, the phone became as slow as molasses. In addition to that applications sometimes freeze, and the whole experience has become unbearable. This release is extremely poorly optimized and is choke full of dubious AI features and heavy graphics effects. And most of this useless garbage cannot be disabled because ... Apple.