Attention developers: Don’t be too confident your mobile app is prepared for iOS 18
Based on historical trends from unitQ data, organizations across the board should anticipate a surge in user-reported issues with their mobile apps when iOS 18 launches this September. unitQ's AI-driven analysis of App Store reviews of thousands of leading mobile applications reveals that when Apple introduces major iOS updates, user complaints about the new software disrupting functionality in their apps rise significantly, despite extensive testing through public and developer beta versions prior to the official release.
Following the last three iOS version updates in a row, unitQ’s examination of App Store reviews showed a spike in users reporting friction.
In the wake of iOS 17’s release on September 18, 2023, unitQ data showed that, in each of the 10 industries we explored, applications suffered a jump in generic issues like app crashing and blank screens. In addition, there was also a substantial increase in the volume of user-identified issues specific to an app’s industry.
For example, music applications saw a massive spike in users complaining about missing lyrics. Shopping apps were hit with a jump in user complaints about irrelevant search results. Overheating and notification issues were a big concern for social networking apps. And users were frustrated a lot more about fund transferring with finance apps after iOS 17 than before the update.
All in all, iPhone users reported a 29% increase in issues with their mobile applications in the wake of Apple updating its operating system to iOS 17.
That’s why if the past is prologue, users will report a lot of friction when iOS 18 comes along. And don’t forget that iOS 18 includes major and never-before-seen advancements in AI — in what Apple is calling Apple Intelligence.
*For more on the user-reported issues associated with the iOS 17 update, read the unitQ study here.
*For more on the user-reported issues associated with the iOS 16 update, read the unitQ study here.
*For more on the user-reported issues associated with the iOS 15 update, read the unitQ study here.
Even with betas, iOS 18 to bring challenges
The destructive quality-of-life or customer-churning issues identified in the unitQ studies occurred despite the advanced release and testing of beta versions — and new betas are now being tested by developers and the public before the expected September release of iOS 18.
This provides even more historical ammunition that the iOS 18 rollout could lead to challenges for end users and, by extension, developers — despite their best efforts. However, the duration these quality issues persist in apps hinges on whether developers and their organizations actively listen to their users' feedback and promptly address the concerns raised.
Incorporate user feedback into your tech stack
Companies are pouring resources into their technology stacks, integrating systems for everything from auditing and security monitoring to application performance and infrastructure management. CIOs and other corporate leaders are deploying a variety of tools to secure their organization's long-term success. However, one critical data source often remains untapped.
This overlooked data is the "Voice of the Customer." Real-time user feedback offers insights into the performance, features and capabilities of your products and services. What’s more, users of applications often uncover as many, but different, issues as machine signals sent from observability platforms. This means that listening to and taking action based on customer feedback are on equal footing with observability platforms.
User reviews on platforms like the App Store and Google Play, customer service interactions in Zendesk, incident reports in Jira, and conversations on social media channels such as Discord, LinkedIn, Reddit, and X, together provide a comprehensive view of customer preferences, challenges, and priorities.
Addressing the issues identified through customer feedback, no matter the language, can boost developers' key performance metrics, enhance customer satisfaction, attract new users and open up additional revenue opportunities. Most importantly, user feedback provides an immediate guide to resolving all user-facing issues associated with new software updates, like the upcoming iOS 18 release.
Harness user feedback with unitQ artificial intelligence
Embracing customer feedback is only the first step. The greater challenge is in managing and analyzing this vast amount of data to uncover actionable insights.
Artificial intelligence can streamline the analysis of vast amounts of customer feedback—bringing key themes and sentiment trends to the forefront, predicting product defects, feature requests, and identifying potential areas for improvement. unitQ's AI understands the context and subtleties of customer reviews and feedback, enabling a deeper insight into customer perceptions. By harnessing unitQ, businesses can not only meet but surpass quality expectations, staying ahead of the competition and reducing the impact of new iOS and other updates.
About unitQ
As the leading AI-powered Voice-of-the-Customer platform, unitQ empowers companies with actionable insights from user feedback to help them craft high-quality products, services and experiences. unitQ centralizes feedback from all sources and automatically groups it into thousands of granular categories to help organizations discover what matters most to users — all in real time. Category-leading companies like Spotify, Bumble, Pinterest, Udemy, CarGurus, HelloFresh and Zendesk rely on unitQ to drive growth, reduce churn and build brand loyalty.
With unitQ customer feedback software, including unitQ GPT, organizations can discover quality issues at the same time as their users. Know what product launches, releases or evergreen features are causing the most bugs or support tickets. Drill into the root causes of these issues by source, platform, device, customer segment and more.
Want to see how your organization compares to others? Get your free unitQ Score or book a unitQ demo today!
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Lance Miles is Senior Data Engineer at unitQ.
