Apple released the unfinished version of iOS 7 into the clutches of developers on Monday, and rather unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of interest in it. After all, it contains the most radical update to the design and look of iOS since the software was introduced in 2007.
Below is a graph from Chitika, which used impressions on its ad network in the U.S. and Canada to determine the share of web traffic that is being generated by devices running iOS 7. Chitika found that after three days, the iOS 7 beta is already running on 0.22 percent of mobile devices. That number should only continue to rise.
Chitika says that 0.22 percent three days later is twice as high as the amount of interest in the iOS 6 beta more than a month after its release in 2012.
Notably however, the number of impressions generated by iOS 7 beta users over our network has continued to increase. For comparison, while we previously observed users of the iOS 6 beta generating 0.11% of all iOS traffic following the third beta release on July 16, 2012, iOS 7 users are already responsible for 0.22% of all North American Web traffic from compatible devices two days after its initial release. However, it is worth noting that the third iteration of the iOS 6 beta was available on some iPad models, specifically version two and above.
You might think 0.22 percent isn’t a very big number — and relative to the 600 million iOS devices sold, it’s not. But we’re talking about a very specific and limited group that has downloaded this: Apple’s registered developers who’ve paid for the iOS SDK (and possibly some who were able to get it on the grey market). And there’s a remarkable amount of interest/fear of what Apple has done — and a lot of work they’re going to have to do to get ready for its official release in a few months.
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