A Study on Rapidly Decreasing Average Life Cycle of Mobile App

App developers always think that their app will be a killer app and will get the more and more users, after release. But the reality is something different. Apart from a few close friends and others developers, nobody knows anything about the app. And even if people install the app on a smartphone, the chances are that it will be deleted in less than three months.

A recent survey from the Yahoo! Advertising said that the average life cycle of an app is rapidly decreasing. From the survey of 2,590 people who use the apps on a regular basis, 60% of smartphone users delete apps during “periodic clean outs” of their smartphones, while 73% users delete an app to make space for other apps, and 33% of users delete an app because they don’t find it useful anymore.

The report about the app life cycle from the Yahoo! Advertising said that 29% of apps are failed to get space in smartphones more than a week, while 48% of apps stay up to one month. Only 4% of apps manage to stay more than a year in smartphones.

The App Is Not Dead, It’s Sleeping

Every app has a different amount of time duration to stay unused on a smartphone. According to Yahoo, the average amount of time that app is ignored on a smartphone is around 12 weeks. Mostly, people replace apps at least once a month, while few people are replacing apps few times a week or more.

The above figure clearly indicates the reasons that why people are deleting apps. 55% of people deleting the apps because they are not using that app, 53% of people found a better app as compared to their older one, 52% of people deleting their apps because they are irritated with the apps and because of the too many ads and storage problem people are deleting the apps.

An App for Everything

If, an app gets removed from users’ mobiles within a week, a month, or a year then what is a future of an app? The answer is to create an out of the box app. There are still many undiscovered app concepts that can help to make our life more comfortable. There are millions of apps available in the app stores, but people have a higher expectation from the newly released apps, and they always expect something new. Now, it’s a trend that people are finding their every problem’s solution through an app.

Successful and engaging apps don’t get discarded

Just think about a few apps such as Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp etc., that all get the permanent position in smartphones. On the other hand, people will download an app, play with it for a bit and then move to something else. Only successful and engaging apps don’t get discarded, they just grow and evolve. According to one survey, 80% of people install an app because they are looking for something new or are tired with their old apps. Apps that fulfill the user’s specific requirement can get positive reviews, and they are likely to trigger a higher installation score of 58% and 57% respectively. A majority of people prefers app stores for downloading the apps. They usually prefer the apps having the higher ranking in the app stores.

Ads Wake Up Apps

Passive apps can benefit from advertising, continuous hammering about using an app through the ads would encourage users to restart usage. That is known as reengagement. Moreover, recommendations through friends and family also play a vital role in any app’s success. 52% of people revisit the app if their peers told them to.

The above figure indicates that 43% of content related apps being reopened because of the advertising. And, the winner is Fantasy sports apps that being reopened by the users at a maximum time as compared to other app categories.