10% of installed apps are ignored after one week

Ah, that new app smell. There is nothing like it in the world. You have just discovered that special app you've been looking for, and you can't wait to install it on your handset. That first day, you are using the app constantly as you wonder to yourself how you ever managed to live without it. But as the subsequent days go by, you find yourself using the app less and less until you get to the point where you wonder what the heck made you so excited about this app in the first place.

This is quite a common experience. According to the latest study from Apps Flyer, only 4% to 5% of smartphone users continue to actively use an app thirty days after it was installed. Even worse, just 10% are still actively using an app that was installed just one week ago. As bad as this information sounds, it actually is an improvement over last year's data for non-organically discovered apps. Those are the apps that you have an incentive to open.

The bottom line is that we are spending less time with the apps that we want to install, and a bit more time with the apps that developers are trying to get us to install. And for those of you who like to consider iOS v. Android a modern day equivalency of the Civil War, you probably will be interested in hearing that the year-over-year increase in app retention for non-organic apps is 25% for iOS users and just 4% for Android users. Remember, these are the apps that developers are trying to get you to install.

As it turns out, Android users are more apt to retain apps that they discover themselves while iOS users favor keeping non-organically discovered apps. In addition, while only 2% of app installations result in a monetary transaction, the odds of this taking place are 80% higher on iOS over Android. And that could be one of the reasons why app developers favor writing for iOS over Google's open source mobile OS.


source: AppsFlyer via  AndroidAuthority