Jan 23 2012

The Mobile App User Half Life

Recently at a iOS development meet up the presenters from Qubop showed a powerful slide from their presentation that quantified the mobile app user life cycle. It is estimated that on average after one day of usage, 38% of the users will stop using a mobile application. After a week, the percent of users that will still use the app drops to 50%. After 6 months, you are down to 10% of users still using your app in some capacity.

Because of the half life of mobile application users, app developers are constantly updating their mobile apps. It depends on the number of apps you have on your phone, but if I don’t get the latest apps in a weeks period I would have 15 app updates waiting for me. I update one day and the next day there is another app ready to update. Because apps are updated so often, and they require the users permission to do so, mobile app users have are developing app update fatigue.