Apple Inc. (AAPL): iOS 6 Upgrade Gets A Lot of ‘No’

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been getting a lot of good sales over the last couple of weeks over its iPhone 5, and it just recently launched its new operating system, iOS 6. With those and the anticipated launch of the iPad Mini, the company seems to be banking on its very loyal followers to carry it through a record-breaking holiday sales season. There are numbers that are expected to put big smiles on faces of investors like billionaire fund manager David Tepper of Appaloosa Management LP.

And over the last few days, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been reaching out to those existing customers who have pre-i5 devices on older operating systems, offering them the chance to upgrade their devices to the new iOS 6. And what happened with those loyal, ardent followers of the Apple brand, who seem to always line up for the latest and greatest? When it comes to the new iOS …

Eh, not so much. Apple Inc. (AAPL) reported that more than 100 million older-generation iDevices have been upgraded to the new iOS 6, but data research firm  Strategy Analytics reported that the number isn’t all that impressive when one considers that there are 283 million iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users in the Apple-verse. Doing the math, that means nearly two of every three Apple users, so far, has passed on the upgrade.

There could be a number of reasons why so many are not hooked into the latest OS, says analyst Ross Rubin of Reticle Research. “They could be in contract for a phone that can’t update to iOS 6 or have a model that can’t take advantage of some key features and therefore choose to hold off,” he said. “Or they could have heard of the problems with the Maps application and choose to hold off until it improves.”

There is even feedback from those Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) fans who did upgrade, but now want to go back to iOS 5, despite CEO Tim Cook’s public apology for failures with Apple’s proprietary mapping app on the new OS – citing very quick battery drainage rate and other bugs besides the mapping app that affect some features. Despite the relative low number, however, Strategy Analytics said in the long-term, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) users do tend to upgrade more readily than those who use the top OS competitor on the market, Android by Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG).