Gradual Adoption of iOS 26 on iPhones Could Have Unexpectedly Harm Tesla’s Gross sales: Report

The tech world is a wealthy and complicated international ecosystem. If a butterfly flaps its wings in your smartphone’s working system, that may probably trigger a hurricane for Tesla’s gross sales, in response to the the interpretation of occasions specified by the latest column from Apple scoop man Mark Gurman of Bloomberg.

Specifically, evidently iPhone customers’ obvious resistance to iOS 26 led to CarPlay not being adopted by Tesla, which can have price Tesla treasured income at a time when it was sorely wanted. (It’s price noting that whereas it was rumored that customers had been gradual to undertake iOS 26 as a result of they hated the gross new Liquid Glass aesthetic, the data on that are contradictory, though updates to iOS 26 really do appear to have lagged.)

Apple CarPlay, which brings up a well-recognized and easy-to-use illustration of your iPhone display screen in your automotive’s infotainment system, is a make-or-break function for some automotive consumers. You can discover Reddit posts in which CarPlay fanatics lament the feature’s absence in Teslas, and probably let it dissuade them from shopping for the corporate’s EVs in any respect.

According to Gurman’s reporting from November, sales-starved Tesla observed this criticism, and moved to right the omission, probably by the tip of the 12 months. Tesla apparently knew it was in hassle on the time, and This autumn gross sales numbers mirrored that: they had been down 16% from the earlier fiscal quarter, and in comparison with 2024, deliveries had been down by 9%.

According to Gurman’s nameless leakers in and round Apple, CarPlay was anticipated to run in a window throughout the Tesla proprietary infotainment system, and “CarPlay also won’t tap into Tesla features like FSD, or full self-driving mode. Drivers will need to rely on Tesla’s own navigation app for that,” in response to Gurman.

If you’ve ever been in a Ford with Blue Cruise driver help and CarPlay working on the identical time, you’ve had a style of this sophisticated technological dance.

Apparently, harmonizing maps features in CarPlay with Tesla’s autonomous driving system wasn’t going nicely when GPS steerage was working, leading to “a confusing experience for users, who could theoretically have both applications open side by side,” in response to Gurman.

So reportedly Tesla requested Apple to tweak its iOS, which they had been keen to do in iOS 26, which ought to theoretically have paved the best way for CarPlay to roll out in Tesla’s. But that reportedly nonetheless hasn’t occurred, as a result of Tesla was frightened that each one these theoretical iPhone customers turning into first-time Tesla homeowners had been going to try to sync them with nonetheless glitchy, un-patched iOS 25.

Gurman implies, however doesn’t state outright, that latest stories of 74% adoption of iOS 26 on iPhones from the previous 4 years characterize some type of attainable watershed second—so long as too many individuals don’t nonetheless have iOS 26.0—the unique model of iOS 26 that also didn’t have the Tesla bug repair—on their telephones.

So does that imply sufficient individuals have comparable software program, and Tesla is about to lastly ship assist for CarPlay? Gurman specifies no such factor. Nonetheless, the replace continues to be apparently within the works.