In a recent study, Localytics – one of the leading statistics and research firms in the world – has found that nearly one-fourth of all apps are deleted after just one use. This high rate of app deletion, coupled with lowering attention spans and a highly competitive app market, are all part of a phenomenon we like to call The Developer Challenge.
In an increasingly app-driven world, the developer challenge is more real than ever before. We’re flooded with choices when it comes to apps. There are literally hundreds of them for doing anything imaginable. From sorting your worthless photo library to managing your multi-million dollars worth of stocks, you can do it all with a tiny app sitting on the screen of your mobile phone. Obviously, the app market is highly competitive!
A different market dynamic
Unlike a traditional goods and service market, the app market is different in one key functional area — choice. Because of the sheer number of choices that are on offer, the app market has a very low threshold for mistakes. Most users simply download multiple apps for a single purpose and then delete the ones that they don’t like.
Last year, exactly one-fourth of the people were deleting their apps after just one session. This year, that number has gone down to 23%; yet, for all intents and purposes, we can assume that it’s still 1/4th of all users.
Such high rate of abandonment is definitely not good for the business.
The numbers don’t get any better with abandonment after second, third, or fourth use. In fact, the numbers only worsen.
Note: Retention Rate here is described as the likelihood a user will not delete the app after a given number of sessions.
As you can see, the retention rate for apps falls after each usage. Each time a person opens an app, he is less likely to come back to it … until the 10th usage. After that, the possibility that he will return to the app suddenly shoots up.
That “10th time use” is what I like to call the hook. If a user opens the app for the 11th time after the first install, there’s almost a 40% chance that he won’t delete the app. He’s hooked. But, equally possible is that on the 10th session, there is a 98% chance that the user will abandon the app!
Other Factors
A lot of other factors contribute to this Developer Challenge as well.
Most users will not look at apps that are not in the top 10, a.k.a., Trending. It’s just like what happens with us when we Google stuff. We hardly ever go to the second page. And I don’t think I know of anyone who’d go to the third!
But then, it’s extremely hard to come up in the top ten. Even more so now that Apple plans to launch paid ads in the search results. And to make matters worse, there were allegations that Apple is manipulating the trending results to show its own apps in the top charts!
There’s also the biggest barrier to entry in the form of high standards of scrutiny that developers have to go through in order to submit their apps. Apple has been working to get that fixed, though. The average App review time for AppStore has been greatly reduced over the past couple of months.
Bottom line: It’s tough being a developer. The Developer Challenge is real, people, so don’t presume to think otherwise. But, it’s the free market, and there’s nothing we can do about it, except support the good apps by being loyal to them. And maybe buying the paid version every now and then.
