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Nearly 1 In 4 People Abandon Mobile Apps After Only One Use (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via TechCrunch: According to a new study on mobile app usage, nearly one in four mobile users only use an app once. TechCrunch reports: "Based on data from analytics firm Localytics, and its user base of 37,000 applications, user retention has seen a slight increase year-over-year from 34 percent in 2015 to 38 percent in 2016. However, just because this figure has recovered a bit, that doesn't mean the numbers are good. Instead, what this indicates is that 62 percent of users will use an app less than 11 times. These days, 23 percent launch an app only once -- an improvement over last year, but only slightly. For comparison's sake, only 20 percent of users were abandoning apps in 2014. On iOS, user retention saw some slight improvements. The percentage of those only opening apps once fell to 24 percent from 26 percent last year, and those who return to apps 11 times or more grew to 36 percent from 32 percent in 2015. In particular, apps in the middle stage of their growth (between 15,000 and 50,000 monthly active users), saw the strongest lift with retention and abandonment, the report also noted. This is attributed to these apps' use of push notifications, in-app messages, email, and remarking. While push notifications have always been cited as a way to retain users, in-app messages also have a notable impact -- these messages improve users retention to 46 percent, the study found. 17 percent will only use app once if they see an in-app message, but those not using messages see 26 percent of users abandoning the app after one session.
25% of mobile Apps are crap, and proof of that only becomes obvious when they are used for the first time.
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crApps.
That means that 3 out of four folks that plays Angry Birds play it a second time??? God help us all!!!!!!
Telephones do not have many useful applications beyond making telephone calls and writing SMS. Yes, you can try to schedule events with them or use them as an alarm clock unless your battery runs out, but mostly they are just used for a bit of entertainment.
People in-the-know don't use mobile phones at all, except when they expect a call.
What would be lots more useful to me in understanding this data is how many of the apps abandoned after one use, had some kind of registration screen as the first step - I'm pretty sure that MANY apps are shedding users like mad simply because they ask for ANY information about you up front instead of just letting you use the app for a while before committing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wait...
1 in 4 people abandon *all* mobile apps after only one use?
1 in 4 people abandon *some* mobile apps after only one use?
1 in 4 people abandon *any* mobile apps after only one use?
or 1 in 4 downloads are only used once?
What does this mean?
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Most apps are crap. They don't do what they advertise to do or even if they do are so loaded with either unwanted security holes or unwanted crap that interferes with the usage of the app. I've found many good apps that I simply won't have on my phone because, 1. They don't explain why they need access to (you pick), mainly my contacts. 2. Why they are so large. 22MB for a flashlight only app. Really? Turn my flash on and off on my camera needs 22MB where I found an app that does it in 2MB. 3. If you don't have a firewall on your phone you're a fool. You have no idea how many times and what is being sent from those apps and that is going to burn you someday. Maybe not by identity theft but by draining your battery.
Look, even the Facebook app is frightening. If you have that the microphone is turned on and they listen to your conversations that are occurring when you don't know it. If you don't believe me that was just proven in the nightly news last week. After they listen to you they provide with the greatest ads that they know that you must want and love.
If you download ANY app from the Samsung store you're automatically asking for trouble. If you're not convinced then download them. But I won't tell you I told you so as I don't really care about fools and horses.
I hope these kind of studies reach the ears of Apple and Google so that they may push for 100% HTML5+JavaScript based webapps.
Currently, specs exist to use just about any feature imaginable from native apps with JavaScript, but a lot of them remain unimplemented.
I understand their business decision. After all, it's much easier to take a piece of the cake when you control 100% of the distribution. But it's not fair to the user or the app developers to force everyone into making sloppy native apps.
So many apps are junky or the games aren't fun. Boom uninstall within seconds.
I'm an iOS user. (just so we're clear that I don't play in the Google ecosystem)
At first (2009) I was app-crazy and tried out a large array of things. But within a year, I found I had settled on a core set of apps:
1. Games. Old games, like PacMan, Battleship, Sonic, Centipede, etc etc etc). Hell, the folder they're in is called "Time-Out" (Anyone remember Time-Out arcades?)
2. Audio utilities: DB meter, DB grapher, spectrum analyzer
3. Timekeepers -- a clock utility to detect and correct problems with clocks - mechanical, pendulum clocks, an addiction of mine, a watch log, to keep time of how my windup watches are doing
4. Creative: Painting, animation, not that I have any talent for this at all. And iBooks and Kindle, both which see much use, moreso in the ipad than in the phone. Also a video editor, video effects, and in the ipad, imovie. One can make a passable little movie with just a phone. An app to put speech balloons and make multi-panel photos out of many other photos.
After that, just a smattering of weird stuff like a Roman to Arabic number converter, a useless light meter that reads in foot-candles, crossword / anagram app, and ookla's speed test.
I haven't bought or downloaded a new app in more than a year. Why? I got all I need! Oh yeah, my first real nice app was Calcbot, because i like having a paper tape like in the old days.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
As a developer, "1 in 4" seems low based on usage stats. I know I almost never install "the app" for any brand - if/when I want something from them I just pull up the web site (and if their site doesn't work on my mobile device, fuck 'em). However, I'm happy to see corporations continue to pour money into the "we need our own app" hole.
I abandoned all the shit my ISP and phone manufacturer gave me after 0 uses!
I'd try and abandon a lot more software on my laptop if it was seriously pocket-change territory in terms of pricing.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It would appear that 'apps' are rather intrusive if they are phoning home enough that we can say how many are opened only once. It would also appear that users are substantially less harsh in their assessments than the miserable shovel ware of the mobile world deserves if so many are being opened at all.
When I look at an App, the rating rarely indicates how good it is. This is due to many apps using various methods to get people who like the app to rate it, and those that don't not too. If you've ever seen the in app message box: Would you give this app 5 stars? [Yes] [No]. Where Yes takes you to rate the app, and No takes you too a feedback form.
On the flip side I've seen many 3.5 star apps which are wonderful, but people are downrating it as punishment for putting in some change they don't like, or the 100th time they've used it something bad happened.
Without a good rating system, it is hard to pick out good apps from crap ones.
Modern app appers ONLY app apps, and they keep apping apps while apping other apps! Only LUDDITES abandon apps because they're too stupid to figure out how to app the app!
Apps!
From what I see, most apps are designed with a narrow view that comes from how the app's author wanted to use the app. There is no time taken to make the UI more robust so that it works for more people. I just chalked this up to a lot of self-starters making apps as opposed to people with real UI design training.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Advertising networks like Fyber and Tapjoy encourage installing apps for a single use. Only by running the app once do these game libraries provide credits in the form of game "gold" or "gems." Once the credits have been applied, there is little advantage to the user to keep the app installed. In fact, in some cases, it can be shown that leaving an app installed can be highly invasive to the privacy of the user.
I'd have guessed that at the very least 3 out of 4, or closer to 9 out of 10 apps only get started once. If 3 out of 4 people actually keep using apps they download that means that the quality has to be surprisingly high. Consider:
1) Most apps are free, lowering the bar to download and install it close to zero.
2) Most "pseudo-free" apps (read: nearly all the "free" ones) want money from you no later than when they showed you the basic functionality, i.e. what you get to see the first time you start it.
So that either means that apps really offer enough quality for people to throw money at them, or people are just generally dumb enough to sink micropayment after micropayment... Ok, ok, I stop here before I lose faith in humanity.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nearly 1 In 4 People Abandon Mobile Apps After Only One Use...
How do they do that without using up all the space on their phone?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
It feels more like 3/4
I totally
lose != loose
Show the real stats. How many months does the average paid app actually last on a phone.
The mobile app market is little more than a giant pyramid scam. They make broken operating systems then you guy to play detective to figure out which app half ass solves the problem until Google or Apple get around to fixing it. Which someone takes years even when three are millions of ppl demand often the most simple features.
It seems to me Google has bitten off far more than they can chew and Apple really doesn't care as long as their profits are high. Google really has no business designing UIs. They don't have a single app with good UI. If they are in charge of our top mobile OS, we are all screwed.
Not to mention Google's main point of existence and most direct profit model is literally to mine personal data as much as possible. The more personal data an app can get and 'share' the more money Google makes.
That's why the app store has such light regulation. Google doesn't want to be too hyrpocritical, but in doing that they are asking everyone to put all their most personal data into a totally insecure platform.
I've never seen a time where private information security was so bad. Even in the PC days the limiting factor was that people only tend to put a limited amount of personal info in a PC. A phone is even more personal and with todays app looking for every personal data angle it's worse than ever. Combine that with unregulated foreign manufacturing, OEM software controls of apps and OS updates and the general splintered nature of Android and Google OS is mostly a joke.
Internet devices are going to make Android look stupid and at the rate Google is going they will never catch up. They are try to do too much and not focusing on the OS. All that app revenue went to their heads I guess and they forgot that if they ignore the core platform uses will start to hate everything Google since they have a daily reminder with the phone OS and apps that they are no longer happy with.
The mobile experience just hasn't improved enough for the amount of money people have spent, mostly based on hype and trend buying. It's a bubble because smartphones have not lived up to their promises. They are not automating our lives and in general I think they slow us down by offering inferior ways to do things we used to do with less time on a PC.
Instead of scheduling our tasks to get them done fast many people try to complete tasks on mobile devices where input is many times slower. That may be convenient, but your daily productivity will go down in most cases if you use a smartphone for much else than taking calls, reading texts and reading emails.
As soon as your inputting data into a smartphone, you're losing work hours and productivity, You also have turned your workers portable communications devices into some all in one entertainment gaming system. Most users need to game or watch significant entertainment on their phones. They need apps that directly improve productivity by REDUCING the amount of time we spend doing things and AUTOMATING our lives.
Smartphones are doing the opposite. They a time sinks and primarily for entertainment. In many cases the access to these huge app stores winds up harming the phone and distracting the phone owner without providing enough benefits for the time they waste. It's not a great device to read on. Many times they are inferior to flip phones for calling and certainly far inferior in battery life.
The list goes on as to why smartphones have mostly failed to be anything other than overpriced and entirely unnecessary entertainment devices instead of the personal assistants most ppl wanted. Tailoring these platforms into productive platforms just takes far too much expertise for the average person. Yet Google could easily add in all the proper voice command and shortcuts as well as proper altering code to fix smartphones.
They just don't care because the more time you waste on a phone the more money they make. They don't see any direct r
Thank you for an illustrative example of crapp.
Ezekiel 23:20
A well known quote called Sturgeon's Revelation or Sturgeon's law is "90% of everything is crap". It's certainly true of the software code I've seen, and of the (small) sample of accounting work I've had reason to examine.
In addition, two other factors are probably are work.
If I intend to use an app for something I do often, I frequently click to download the top two or three, trying out each one as the next one downloads. If I'm going to use it often, I may as well select the one I like best. This is more true on Android than iOS, because iOS has fewer free apps. I'm unlikely to BUY three apps in order to compare them.
On the other hand, if I download an app for something I do NOT do frequently, I may well use the app for the task at hand and be done with it. It's not that I didn't use it again because it sucked. Maybe I only used it once because I only need to build one set of stairs, or fix one ipad, or whatever. It may have worked perfectly well, so the job is done and I don't need it anymore.
Most mobile apps, as in nearly 90% of them are utter crap and deserve to be abandoned after one use.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They're suggesting that every fourth applet user habitually abandons apps for reasons of disappointment/entertainment/curiosity. If a random user abandoned an app, it would be more sensible to claim that one in four apps are abandoned.
they put any form of advertising on my phone, i figure if the include advertising then they built the app to make money (not that theres anything wrong with that) but i want small simple apps that stick to the UNIX philosophy "Does One Thing and does it well" if i want a more elaborate app i will pay for it, an android phone has just about everything i want in a smartphone, so if i put on an addon it was because i was bored and spending my spare time browsing google play store for some interesting technology that can use my phone in a new way, not that i needed anything, if i really needed something i would rather pay cash for it than be spammed ads that turns my phone in to a hand held billboard of advertising, adware is the first to go, next is apps that dont work cleanly and good, i also look at required permissions and package size, if they seem too bloated or want to do more than required then i wont install them in the first place,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Typically I decide I need an app to do foo. Read the reviews, install the top 3-4 that look like they'll suit my needs, try them all out, then stick with the best one. The others get deleted.
As someone else pointed out, the #1 thing that makes me delete your app before even getting to it is a registration screen, or some other screen that makes me do something other that what the app does. Had one app a few years back that, it turned out, I'd only installed the screen that asked for my credit card info so it could download the real app. Did anyone actually fall for that?
Honestly, my phone uses CM13 and the only apps I use are Firefox and Waze.
Open any app for the first time and you'll learn two things: either it requires more permissions than you're willing to give or it has intrusive advertising.
1. 1 minute to rinse/gargle
2. 20 minutes till train gets here
3. 5 minutes till Uber arrives
4. 15 minutes till stripper greets Ken Happy birthday
5. 30 minutes till the pain killers take effect
No, the stopwatch doesn't cut it.
Or around then. The mobile market is 1% usable software (not necessarily good either) and a huge mess of scammy crappy clones and poorly designed software.
I use a Windows Phone. It's got all kinds of shit built in. I actually don't have any "apps" installed, and I use my phone pretty much constantly. Having to cobble together everything my phone does with lots of unrelated, 3rd party apps would suck. I cringe every time I see an iOS or Android phone, and the main menu screen looks like my grandparent's Windows 95 desktop.
I don't respond to AC's.
This will be the year of Linux mobile. Scoping with scopes is the new apping.
Scopes!
Posting dumb notifications is a good way to get me to uninstall your app, not keep using it.
Also pretty common for me to install an app, try it briefly, then uninstall it because its garbage. do that 5-10x until I find one that works and its easy to see how the stats pile up.
fuck systemd and windows 10
Better to fuck systemd than fuck another man in the ass.
The times are changing. Why not try everything? It's all free to try if not free outright, and it's just as easy to procure the software as it is to read an article about it. So of course this won't have the commitment we're used to on older platforms. There's no barrier to participate. No financial commitment, and no difficulty finding and installing the software.
Probably 90% of bundled games don't even get installed, or only used for Steam card farming.
I abandon most "Apps" when i see the ridiculous permissions they want (and don't need to function).
Instead, what this indicates is that 62 percent of users will use an app less than 11 times
Right, can't be bothered to RTFA, but I don't get this statistic. Does this mean 62 percent of users will use at least one app less than 11 times? Or all apps less than 11 times? Or a specific app less than 11 times? In which case, doesn't it matter which app we are talking about?
If 38% of users never use an app fewer than 11 times, then I'd say that's a great success rate of the app idea
"However, just because this figure has recovered a bit, that doesn't mean the numbers are good"
Arg! These ARE good numbers!
In the past we had to actually buy software, or find a demo on some random web page or download site that might be filled with viruses.
Now I go to a single location where I can find millions of programs, and instantly try them to see if I like them.
How can anyone think this is bad? It's simply Sturgeon's law sped up.
I fall into this category, almost all apps I have used really stink. I will not pay for any more for the same reason.
There are a number of reasons for using an app only once or a few times. Some of them signal failure by the developers; some do not.
The out and out failures: the app may be poorly designed. It may not do what it claims to do. It may not run reliably on my hardware. It may have advertising that is excessively intrusive. It may continually update and drain my battery. It may not provide as good an experience as the company's web site does.
The competitive failures: I may discover an app that I like more. When I'm looking for an app for something I will often download three or four competing apps, try them out, and choose one to keep.
The semi-failures: It might be a game that I enjoy playing a few times but then get bored with.
The non-failures: I may have downloaded an app for a one-time or short-term need. An example is a transit app for a city I am visiting. The app is just fine, but I no longer need it once I leave that city.
Flashing ads
So much gratis desktop software survives without any ads. What the hell is with all of the free mobile apps having flashing ads?
At a dollar or two per app, I might well get a few different apps to see which is the best. If a good app for doing X is worth $10 to me, then I can run through five at $2 each to find the best.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes