Which iOS version should I target fall 2012 [closed]

Question

Hi, I've just started working on an iPhone app that I plan to have submitted to the app store the last week of August. Right now I'm using iOS 4.1, but I'm thinking about using iOS 5 since it has support for JSON, what should I do? Use iOS 5 or 4, my app is basically a picture game.

Answer 1

earlier in the year, when i was making a similar decision, i used the data at the macrumors.com from march to help me determine where my users might be coming from.

the graph at that link shows a pretty steady and very slowly declining share of iOS 4 users. that is also 4 months old.

also recognize that if you are selling apps, those who are sticking with iOS 4 are likely to be people like my parents, who got an iPad and have never upgraded and don't buy apps, or are too poor to afford an upgrade to a fancier phone, and thus are probably also pinching pennies.

at any rate, rough rule of thumb based on the statistics at that site … you'll probably be giving up on somewhere between 1/6th and 1/10th of the market at this point, and that fraction will be the hardest part of the market to sell to.

you need to decide how aggressive you need to be, how much return you'll get for targeting iOS 4 users based upon how much effort you'll have to put in to be backward compatible, and whether that's worth it. for me, i built one new app that i made capable of running on iOS 4.2, but another seemed like it would be too much work, so i stuck with iOS 5 .