Apple Apps Boast Better Retention Than Android

Analytics company Localytics has revealed that iPhone and iPad apps have a 52 percent higher retention rate than Android apps, a statistic likely to prove interesting to the developer community.

While 35 percent of iPhone and iPad apps were launched more than 10 times over the last year, the same held true for only 23 percent of Android apps, the company reported in a 26 June blog post.

App Loving

Judging by a graph of iOS and Android app use created by Localytics, which provides analytics information for more than 300 million devices running either iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and HTML5 apps, people tend to either use an app once and decide it’s not for them, or else they use it constantly. iPhone and iPad users seem to also determine more quickly whether an app is for them.

Twenty-four percent of Android apps were used once, compared with 21 percent of iPhone and iPad apps. While only 12 percent of the Apple users gave an app a second try, 17 percent of Android users did.

It’s rare, on all platforms, for an app to be used five, six or seven times – people either love an app or they don’t. When it came to opening an app seven or eight times over a year, the two platforms score identically, with 3 percent of users giving the app that many tries before abandoning it.

Localytics takes credit for promoting a shift in the industry, from focusing on customer downloads to customer retention, and says that mobile app retention is improving. While in 2010 the number of overall apps opened once was 26 percent, in 2011 that fell to 22 percent. More importantly, the number of apps being used more than 10 times rose from 26 percent in 2010 to 31 percent in 2011 – a 19 percent improvement.

The firm also points to 2012 data from the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which found 29 percent of news app users launched their app more than 10 times per month – which is particularly notable, given that fewer than 10 percent of people who visit mobile Internet news sites did so more than 10 times per month.

“One of the key takeaways of these studies is that a publisher’s app and [mobile] Web users are very different,” writes Localytics. “Websites attract many casual users who arrive from search, social or referring links. App users more purposefully install an app and return directly to it, self-selecting themselves as more qualified and more valuable customers.”

Developer Interest

Understandably, then, developers who can create attractive, addictive apps are critical to the success of the various platforms. In a blog post earlier this month, Flurry, another analytics firm, described the developer community’s embrace of one platform over the other as largely indicative of the platform’s ability to succeed.

The outcome of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference and Google’s I/O event, beginning 27 June, Flurry added, “can largely impact the fate of some of the most prolific, innovative forces in the world’s economy today. Combined, Apple and Google have a market cap of approximately three quarters of a trillion dollars.”

Localytics believes both Apple and Google are building better apps than before, which partly explains the improved retention of apps, and that users, gaining experience, are also making more informed and discerning download decisions.

The iPhone’s greater retention rate, Localytics points out, is likely also due to the greater retention of the device itself. Piper Jaffray has found iPhone retention rates to be as high as 94 percent, compared with 47 percent for Android. Still, the analytics company believes the former figure can be improved.

“In most cases, the iPhone 4S will look ‘new’ to the app publisher, even though the user might have months of prior exposure to the app on the older iPhone 3GS,” said the blog post. “To correctly identify returning users across devices, publishers need to record registration data as part of their app analytics.”

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