One In Five Apps Is Soon Abandoned, But This Is An Improvement

One in five apps is used only once, according to a new Localytics study. Though this may sound like bad news for developers, it’s actually an improvement from 2010 when 26 percent of apps were opened just once. According to the study, during the last four years, the percentage of apps used only once has steadily decreased by 6 percent. During the same period, the percentage of apps used 11 or more times has increased 13 percent, climbing to nearly 40 percent in 2014.

Interestingly enough, Android now beats iOS in app engagement. Forty-five percent (45) of Android apps are opened 11 or more times, compared to 34 percent for iOS. Last year, the operating systems were dead even, at 34 percent apiece. Localytics notes:

A potential reason for this discrepancy is that iOS users may be suffering from app overload. With the relatively larger number of apps installed on iOS devices, competition for an iOS user’s time increases and can weaken retention.

Overall, sports (23 percent) and gaming (22 percent) apps have the highest app abandonment rate, while weather and social networking apps have the lowest. The methodology of this survey is as follows:

Localytics is the leading analytics and marketing platform for mobile and web apps across more than 1.5 billion devices and 25,000 apps. Localytics processes 50 billion data points monthly. The two key metrics used in this report are the number of new users and the retention rates of those new users. We identified the users who first downloaded an app in Q3 of the different years, and then identified how many times those apps were launched on those devices through March 15th of the following year. All results are based on worldwide app usage.

Related articles