treocentral.com >>
Stories >>
Business
News & Reference Apps Dominate Downloads for Long Time Use
There has been a lot of talk about app downloads, usually in the context of Apple.
Earlier this week, it was announced that over two billion have iPhone apps have been served. That number sparked speculation on how many of those apps are actually still being used. Thus, the timeliness of Flurry's report.
According to an analysis by mobile application analytics provider, Flurry, news/reference apps are the most frequently used by consumers over the longest periods of time and are most suited for subscription-based and ad-supported models, while more "gimmicky" entertainment-related apps are used least for the shortest periods of time and lend themselves to one-time download fees.
Flurry examined user retention of mobile applications used on the Apple, Google Android, Blackberry and JavaME platforms across 19 categories by checking to see if users returned to use a downloaded application within 30, 60 and 90-day periods.The analysis also examined the frequency with which consumers used applications over those time periods.
Some of the findings include:
>> News apps, on average, get used more than once per day, at a rate of 11 times per week.
> Once downloaded, many apps in the Entertainment category - which includes Lighter, Fart, IQ Test, ringtones - are typically used only a few times and then left for dead.
> Categories such as Books and Games are the two largest categories in both the Apple App Store and Android Market. These types of applications are characterized by intense usage over a finite period of time.
Check out the chart here.
Conclusion: For those of us in the Palm OS and Windows Mobile spaces, what Flurry reported isn't shocking. What it does do is help put into perspective the numbers Apple is throwing around. 85,000 is a huge number, whether talking about attendance at a football game or number of apps available. But at the end of the day, it is probably a core set of apps that get used on a daily basis. Do you agree?
|
