The distribution of OS versions on BlackBerry phones is mostly unchanged from last month. Use of OS 7.0 is up half a percent to 22.6% of BlackBerrys.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of September 2011 through the end of September 2012.
The below chart shows the relative purchase rate by carrier (normalized by carrier size) of the largest wireless carriers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The carriers with a bold outline on the chart (AT&T, T-Mobile (US), Rogers, Telus, Bell, O2, and Vodafone) all support carrier billing. As seen before, users are far more likely to make purchases if carrier billing is supported. On average, purchases are 2.7 times more likely if carrier billing is supported then if it is not.
The measurements in this chart are relative to the number of purchases at Verizon Wireless (our selected baseline), such that Verizon would always have a value of 1.00. The number of purchases is based upon purchases of Pixelated Plus from July-September 2012. Normalization for carrier size was based on data from the free application Pixelated over the same time period. All data was collected through BlackBerry AppWorld at the time of download.
PlayBook users have continued to be very quick in updating to the newest operating system. August saw an astounding 99.6% of user running OS 2.0 or higher. The result is that developers should feel very confident that they can just release apps requiring a minimum OS of 2.0 without leaving any user behind. In fact the newest OS (2.0.1) is already being used by 98.6% of PlayBook users.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular PlayBook strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of June 2011 through the end of August 2012.
August saw the percentage of BlackBerry users on OS 4.x drop to just over 1.5% while the newer OS versions continued to see gains. OS 7.0+ now accounts for 22.1% of BlackBerry users, while OS 6.0+ accounts for 52.5% of the devices.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of Aguust 2011 through the end of August 2012.
BlackBerry PlayBook users are continuing to upgrade their devices to the newest operating system. July saw 95.6% of users running OS 2.0.1 and 98.2% of users running OS 2.0.0 (or higher).
While the adoption of OS 2.0.1 is actually a bit slower then the adoption of 2.0.0 or 1.0.8 was, it is still a significant majority of users, and a welcome improvement over the upgrade patterns of the old BlackBerry OS.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular PlayBook strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of June 2011 through the end of July 2012.
For the first time in July the majority (51.9%) of BlackBerry phones are running OS 6.0 or higher. OS 7 has seen a healthy gain as well, with almost a quarter (22.1%) of all users running the newest BlackBerry OS.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of July 2011 through the end of July 2012.
In terms of in-market devices, the number of BlackBerry phones being used is much larger then the number of PlayBooks being used. However if you look at app sales, the overall difference is much smaller.
It is unclear if this difference is due to the larger screen size, the different demographics of the userbase, or the ease of use of purchasing and installing apps on the QNX based OS.
After looking at the benefits of carrier billing in the United States and Canada last month, I have now run the numbers for the UK. The results are pretty similar.
Comparative purchase rates for Pixelated Plus are shown in the above chart for the five largest carriers in the United Kingdom. Of these carriers, only O2 and Vodafone support carrier billing. Across all of these carriers, customers who have access to carrier billing are 2.3 times more likely to make a purchase. For a developer, a customer on Vodafone is worth almost the same as four customers on T-Mobile.
Similar to the statistics for US carriers, the measurements in this chart are relative to the number of purchases at Orange (the largest carrier without carrier billing), such that Orange would always have a value of 1.00. The number of purchases is based upon purchases of Pixelated Plus from January-March 2012. Normalization for carrier size was based on data from the free application Pixelated over the same time period. All data was collected through BlackBerry AppWorld at the time of download.
A year since I last looked at the data for BerryReview, Carrier Billing remains a significant advantage for selling apps.
Comparative purchase rates for Pixelated Plus are shown in the above chart for the seven largest carriers in North America. Of these seven carriers, only Verizon and Sprint do not yet support carrier billing. Across all these carriers, customers who have access to carrier billing are 2.14 times a likely to make a purchase.
The measurements in this chart are relative to the number of purchases at Verizon Wireless (the largest carrier), such that Verizon would always have a value of 1.00. The number of purchases is based upon purchases of Pixelated Plus from January-March 2012. Normalization for carrier size was based on data from the free application Pixelated over the same time period. All data was collected through BlackBerry AppWorld at the time of download.
The breakdown of BlackBerry OS versions in March was almost completely unchanged from the preceding month. This is in contrast to the PlayBook OS where users update very quickly.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of March 2011 through the end of March 2012.
The above chart shows the adoption of each version of the BlackBerry PlayBook for each month since June as seen from downloads of the game Pixelated.
Last month saw 95.62% of users running OS 2.0 on the PlayBook. This is despite OS 2.0 launching less then a week before the start of this time frame. At this point you could begin releasing apps that required a minimum OS of 2.0, and it unlikely that anyone would even notice the higher minimum requirements.
March also found 5 users playing Pixelated on devices running either OS 10.0.2 or 10.0.3 which is a good reminder that soon even OS 2.0 will be a thing of the past.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular PlayBook strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of June 2011 through the end of March 2012.
The above chart shows estimated cumulative PlayBook sales by month based on data from downloads of the free game Pixelated.
Of note is the slope of the graph over the past few months. The past three months (which correspond with RIM’s financial quarter) show more PlayBooks sold over this time frame then all previous months combined. Given how lean inventory was at the end of the last quarter, I think that it is possible that RIM will announce 1M PlayBooks shipped in the past three months.
It looks as if the price cut (and Christmas) has helped drive greater adoption of the PlayBook.
The demographics of the P’9981 user base are exactly what you would think that they are. For the moment this phone was released, the joke was that you would need oil money to afford one, and that has turned out to be exactly the case. February demographics are shown in the chart below.
The sample set is significantly smaller then most of the statistics I post here, but this was too fun to pass up. As usual statistics come from last months downloads of the strategy game Pixelated.
Adoption of OS 6 and 7 continued to grow at a slow but steady pace over the past month. 15.3% of users have OS 7.0+ and 44.8% of users have OS 6.0+.
Use of OS 5.0 and higher exceeded 95% for the first time in February. Use of older operating systems is down to less then a quarter of what it was just a year ago, and are almost gone for good. At this point developers should be thinking about cutting off support for devices with an OS version lower then 5.
This data was taken from downloads of the popular BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of February 2011 through the end of February 2012.
After looking at past adoption rates on the PlayBook, it would be expected that the uptake of OS 2.0 on the device would be pretty fast, especially given that this was a major version number update. This turned out to be the case, and even more impressive then I expected.
The chart below shows PlayBook OS versions on February 22nd based on downloads of the game Pixelated.
PlayBook OS 2.0 was released on February 21st. Over 89% of users had already upgraded by February 22nd. By the end of March, I would expect over 99% of users to be running the new operating system.
On the old BlackBerry OS, it took 23 months for 89% of users to be running OS 5.0 (or higher), yet the PlayBook was able to hit this percentage less then 23 hours. So far the BBX operating system is showing itself to be thankfully free from any OS fragmentation issues.