Paul Haddad from Tapbots writes about the iPhone OS 3.0 adoption rate he's seen among his users. Granted it's a relatively small sample size based on request headers from 3500 unique requests per day, but it shows the benefits of having the handset manufacturer also controlling the distribution of the OS to end-users.

From Tapbots: Percentage of users running a given OS. x-axis is days in the month of June.
Look at the abuse that BlackBerry users take at the hands of carriers, especially Verizon. It took Verizon 175 days to release an update for the Storm, and even then it came out 33 days after the OS was leaked and unofficially made available.
BlackBerry 9530 OS Releases
Just as Apple only has to worry about a relatively small number of drivers for their desktop OS, they only have 5 device models running their mobile OS. RIM currently has 4-5 that number on GSM, CDMA and IDEN (more on that later), and they are dependent on the carriers to certify and and make an OS update available.
But why should the carriers bother to issue OS updates? Most users are under contract, so the only entity that has something to lose is RIM1 – mostly in the form of negative publicity.
- More on this later too [back]





















































