Newly released data suggests that the Apple Watch might be delivering some big benefits for the iOS ecosystem. Not only are app crash rates low, but the device also seems to be helping to drive iPhone hardware and software upgrades.

The data, collected by app performance experts at Crittercism, suggest that crash rates for Apple Watch apps is far lower than the desired crash rate of 1 percent. At the point when the Apple Watch was launched the app crash rate was 0.00833 percent, a figure that rose to 0.01233 percent by the end of May.

Crash rates for iOS currently hovers around the 2 percent mark.

Apple Watch has also driven iPhone iOS upgrades. When the Apple Watch was announced on April 10, only 51 percent of iPhones were running a compatible version of iOS (compatible versions being iOS 8.2 or later). By the launch date on April 24 this had risen to 61 percent, and this figure has since risen to 70 percent.

Two things could account for this. The first is that iPhone owners are upgrading the iOS version on their iPhone, while the other possibility is that people are buying new iPhones to go with their Apple Watch.

Crittercism also has data on how the hardware adoption has changed since the release of the Apple Watch, showing that the percentage of compatible devices has increased dramatically in just a few weeks. The data showed that on April 10 that only 35 percent of iPhones were compatible with the Apple Watch (that is, an iPhone 5/5c/5s or later), but that by the end of May this figure had risen to 50 percent.

In comparison, only a third of Android devices are compatible with Android Wear smartwatches. However, given that at the beginning of the year this figure stood at only 10 percent, there's been a fairly swift adoption of compatible Android devices too.

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