iPhone owners may be upgrading fast to 3.0 software

tripThe developers of iPhone apps face tricky questions about when they should release applications that takes advantage of the latest software or hardware from Apple.

Trip Hawkins, chief executive of Digital Chocolate, says that iPhone owners seem to be upgrading fast to the newest version of the iPhone’s 3.0 operating system since it was released on June 16. That may mean that iPhone developers may want to adopt the iPhone 3.0 software sooner rather than later. Of course, reports suggest that iPod Touch fans may lag behind the crowd because of fees associated with upgrading.

More than 60 percent of Digital Chocolate’s iPhone customers have upgraded to the new OS, Hawkins said in a blog post. The company sells mobile games and has a number of hits on the iPhone. Its tracking software can detect which version of the OS is on the customer’s phone.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.