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Nearly 1 In 4 People Abandon Mobile Apps After Only One Use (techcrunch.com) 141

Posted by BeauHD from the diminishing-returns dept.
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.
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Nearly 1 In 4 People Abandon Mobile Apps After Only One Use More

Nearly 1 In 4 People Abandon Mobile Apps After Only One Use

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  • In other news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:03PM (#52220863)

    25% of mobile Apps are crap, and proof of that only becomes obvious when they are used for the first time.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yup, and I think throwing out 25% is a rather *low* number. My results are worse. Top reasons I throw out apps: Push Notifications, too many ads, in-app messages, remarketing and e-mail...

      God, do I hate this crap. I wish more apps were just offering a paid option where I could get rid of all that, and also trust the app not to send usage data somewhere else. Which I consider spying.

      • I'm surprised that "asking for permissions the app has no reason to need" isn't on your list. I had a game that requested access to my photos, texts, and make and receive phone calls. What reason could a game has for those access rights?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You just have to look at the product descriptions in the Apple or Google store to see this.

      Many apps don't even bother to tell you anything about how the app works, instead the descriptions often are just pull quotes from reviews and lists of awards it won. Even when they're describing the app, they tend to be full of nebulous fluff and buzzwords. If you're lucky you'll get a few (non-fluff) sentences about what the product does, but absolutely no sense of how it is to use, or what benefits it has over com

    • Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)

      by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:12PM (#52220925)

      Hell, man. I would say 90% of mobile apps are crap.

      Most of the games aren't fun, and most of the ones that ARE fun throw so many advertisements and notifications at you that it's ridiculous, so they get uninstalled immediately.

      As for productivity apps...they're even worse. There are precious few truly USEFUL apps on a phone. The vast majority of them fall into the "treadmill in your basement" category - meaning, they SOUND useful, but you'll never actually bother with them.

      • Hell, man. I would say 90% of mobile apps are crap.

        I wouldn't go as far as saying they're crap. I'd say that there are a lot of differently abled apps and that users are seeking the right app for the task they have to accomplish. It may take going through three or five "task managers" to find one that has a likable interface and all the features the user wants. God knows I've looked at a lot of them, and I'm still not really happy with any of them. Same thing for file browsers, messaging apps, etc. I've yet to find ANY of the messaging apps that doesn't try

      • You sound like a man that got burned by bing weather

        I feel yeah, I looked at bing weather on my windows phone and it said no rain today. "Cool," I say and take the motorcycle to work. It's been raining almost 4 hours now, plus flood warnings are being issued, and looking on weather underground this is not going to end anytime soon. I'm driving home in the rain.

        Thank's bing weather.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        Hell, man. I would say 90% of mobile apps are crap.

        Given that 90% of everything is crap [wikipedia.org], this shouldn't be a surprise.

    • only 25%??
    • <quote><p>25% of mobile Apps are crap</p></quote>

      That's a pretty generous estimate. Not only are there so many crap apps, you are forced to wade through many of them to find a good one, App store search is deliberately handicapped.

    • They're only used once because you have no way of knowing if they're utter shit until you load it. People have vain hope that the app might be merely mediocre or inadequate and are often disappointed. 10 seconds later it's deleted. Or you try four different apps that all say they do what you want, you try them out and see which actually works, then delete the other three.

      (heaven help us if poeple PAY for this shit and then don't use it)

    • Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:59PM (#52221349)

      Or not used, as is my experience

      1. Download app
      2. App asks for Facebook, Twitter or Gmail login
      3. Delete app

      If I have yet to determine your app's usefulness, I'm not giving you my info. E.g. LetItGo

      This might be drastically different for iPhone people, but that's only because their account and payment info is already integrated.

    • 90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon). Also, one-ti (Score:5, Insightful)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @05:56PM (#52221765) Journal

      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.

      • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amiga3D ( 567632 )

      I find that about 1 in 20 of the apps I've downloaded stayed on my phone for any length of time. So few of them perform at any acceptable level and are so bad that free is too much. I have 2 that were excellent and I bought the premium versions. One of those is fbreader which I had been using for years on linux and decided to buy the premium version on android just to support development since the free version was perfectly functional.

    • 25% of mobile Apps are crap, and proof of that only becomes obvious when they are used for the first time.

      The thirty-day trial has become standard for computer applications, so why not for smartphone apps? Not a 'lite' version, but full functionality for a trial period.

  • Really need figures on first screen (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:14PM (#52220955)

    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.

    • "CoolApp37 wants to use your location information to provide a more personalized experience, Accept or Disallow?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by c ( 8461 )

      This. Many times this.

      I'm not really interested in registering or logging into your app just to see if I'd like it. Particularly if your app isn't really something which should *need* the cloud. A social networking app is pretty much all about the cloud. A 3D modelling app... isn't.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rhazz ( 2853871 )
      +1. My baby monitor comes with an Android app to allow you to view the feed when you are on the same wifi as the monitor. I used to use the app all the time rather than carry around the remote handset. Then the company released an app update which forces you to register an account with the company before you can access the feed. Instant delete. Fuck you Summer Infant.

  • 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.

    • You are an extraordinary case of nonrepresentative sample. I mean, by standard deviations you are way the hell outside the norm.

      Please do not confuse anecdote for data.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Are those classic games free? I'd like to add MAME and its ROMs to iOS v9.3.2, but can't. :(

      • No, not free. But not outrageous, either. A buck or three?

        They're not the ROMs like you'd get in mame, but most of these guys have done a really good job on keeping it real.

        Dragon's Lair on iphone was amazing, it was the actual footage used in the actual game, but it stopped working (crash on launch) after iOS 8 and it seems it never got updated.

  • 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 tend to like the apps better, but there are exceptions. Facebook was using hundreds of megabytes on my phone to display some photos with text... um, what? So that's gone, with the bonus that messenger works fine through the web interface.

  • That's nothing! (Score:3)

    by wardrich86 ( 4092007 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:33PM (#52221153)
    I abandoned all the shit my ISP and phone manufacturer gave me after 0 uses!

  • Could this be because apps are $1 a pop? (Score:3)

    by rsborg ( 111459 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:35PM (#52221163) Homepage

    I'd try and abandon a lot more software on my laptop if it was seriously pocket-change territory in terms of pricing.

  • 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.
  • 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.

  • 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 th

  • 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?

  • Yo (Score:2)

    by steak ( 145650 )

    I totally

  • The Mobile market has mostly been a bust (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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

  • Most mobile apps, as in nearly 90% of them are utter crap and deserve to be abandoned after one use.

  • 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 technolog
  • 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 inf

  • Windows Phone: Don't need apps (Score:3)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @08:21PM (#52222561)
    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.
  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shag ( 3737 )

      This. Given the size of the iTunes Store and Google Play, if you want a certain kind of app, there are probably 20 free ones you can download and try to see which one you like best. My phone says I downloaded 26 free Sudoku apps at some point in the distant past - but for some strange reason, I only kept one of those.

  • 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).

  • "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.

  • 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

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