Apple have said there are nearly 300 million iPads, iPod Touches and iPhones running iOS6, which was released in September last year. The iOS6 launch was marred by the replacement of Google Maps with Apple's seriously flawed mapping software. To address this, Google have released their own MAPS app for the platform however, so many people have since moved to the latest code.
Apple published the announcement, after iOS 6.1 was released to a lukewarm reception. Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller has been quick to support the latest version of iOS, saying in a statement that “it may be the most popular new version of an OS in history.”
Tim Cook said in October 2012 that Apple had 200 million devices running iOS 6 and said that the company had sold a total of 500 million iOS devices since 2007. The latest announcement would mean that there are still 200 million iOS devices running an older version of the operating system. Every iOS device sold since 2009, except the original iPad can run iOS 6. The original iPad doesn't have enough physical memory to run the latest platform.
Apple had a strong Q4, they sold 47.8 million iPhones, 6 million iPod Touches and 22.9 million iPads. This means around 76.7 million devices shipped with iOS 6 pre-installed. A main sticking point for many customers was the removal of Google Maps, causing many people to claim that they would not upgrade their Apple device. With the release of the standalone Google Maps application, that issue has been mostly negated.
Ironically the release of the Google Maps App will be a relief for Apple even though they removed it from the default iOS6 install as they couldn't come to an agreement with Google over data and revenue sharing from the application. Google claim that their stand alone application was downloaded 10 million times in the first 48 hours of release. They haven't updated this information recently.
Photo Stream a cloud sharing package and iMessage, an iOS only equivalent to the popular Blackberry Messenger software. iMessage has already reportedly sent over 450 billion messages.
Apple have launched a new 128GB version of their iPad 4, which costs a whopping £639 inc vat for the Wi-Fi model and £739 inc vat for the 4G/WiFi model. Apple will be releasing both a new iPad and iPhone later this year.
Kitguru says: iOS v Android. This is way it is in 2013.