Adoption Speed

When a new product launches, nobody uses it at first. After some time, everyone knows it. Adoption speed tells you how long this journey takes. It is measured, for example, by how many months a service needs before a hundred million people use it regularly. The telephone took decades for this, the smartphone a few years, the chatbot ChatGPT only two months. It is exactly this comparison that makes the figure so popular in news reports and stock market coverage.

Why investors stare at the curve

For companies, adoption speed is an early warning signal. It shows whether a market is currently tipping. Whoever reacts too late loses customers to faster competitors. The photography company Kodak is the most famous example: the digital camera caught on faster than the company could convert its factories.

On the stock market, the figure directly affects share prices. User numbers that double every few months are seen as evidence of future profits. That’s why companies often publicize such growth figures more prominently than their actual revenue. Investors should be cautious here. A free sign-up is not yet a paying customer.

Pace also matters for politics. Laws take years to develop, while AI tools spread within months. This gap is a key reason why regulation almost always lags behind.

From the curious to the latecomers

Diffusion rarely proceeds evenly. It usually follows an S-curve: at first hardly anything happens, then it rises steeply, and in the end it flattens out. At the beginning stands a small group of tech-enthusiastic early adopters. They try things out even though they are still unfinished.

The decisive leap happens when the broad majority follows suit. This often occurs because a product becomes easier to use or because friends and colleagues are already using it. In the end, the laggards remain—those who only switch once there is no alternative left. Anyone who still doesn’t have a smartphone today belongs to this group.

The whole process is accelerated by low barriers. Software that you open in a browser spreads faster than one for which you need to buy new devices. Costs, privacy concerns, and training effort act as brakes. A common mistake is to confuse adoption speed with lasting usage. Many apps grow rapidly and are deleted again after just a few weeks.

The figure in headlines and company reports

In the news, you usually encounter the term as a record announcement. Phrases like “fastest-growing app of all time” refer to exactly this. Expressions like “enterprise adoption” likewise mean the pace at which companies introduce a tool. With AI, this distinction matters: private individuals try out chatbots immediately, while corporations take considerably longer due to data protection and review processes.

In everyday life you experience the same pattern at school. First a few classmates use an AI tool for homework, half a year later almost everyone does. Teachers and schools also go through this curve, just more slowly.

Be skeptical of the figures cited. Companies like to choose the metric that looks best: registrations instead of active users, or downloads instead of actual openings. The more meaningful question is how many people are still using a product after three months.