Apple has announced that its latest iOS 12 operating system will be rolled out to all iPhone 5S and above users.
Apple’s Craig Federighi during the keynote sessions at WWDC 2018 kickstarted his presentation on the next big iOS release — iOS 12 — by taking a dig at Google. For those unaware, Federighi is the senior vice president of software engineering at Apple and he heads iOS and macOS engineering teams. He said that while 81% of iOS device users are on the current version of iOS 11, the recent Android Oreo release by Google has a mere 6% ‘installed base.’ This means while Google keeps on launching new Android features every year, the vast majority of Android users do not get to use them.
On the other hand, Apple has announced that its latest iOS 12 operating system will be rolled out to all iPhone 5S and above users. So, all the features of iOS 12 along with security upgrades will be available on the five-year old iPhone 5S as well.
As far as Google is concerned, the internet search giant has barely managed to get only 6 percent users on Android Oreo which was launched last year. The majority of Android users are still on Android 7 Nougat or version 6 Marshmallow.
While it might seem “funny” to mock Google for the Android fragmentation, it is worth noting the respective market shares. In the smartphone race, Google’s Android easily has a market share of above 80%. For Apple, it is easy to push software updates because it makes its own software and devices. It, obviously, has a greater control on iPhones and iOS. Google, on the other hand, has to deal with the mast majority of Android OEMs. Interestingly, Google has always updated its Nexus and Pixel series of smartphones to the latest Android version soon after the launch. Having said that Google has stopped providing updates to its Nexus devices and have already announced the end-of-life of its first-gen Pixel phones which were launched two years back while Apple is still upgrading its five-year old iPhone 5S.
