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Android users are twice as likely to uninstall apps than iOS users
A new report from AppsFlyer that tracked the uninstall behaviors of folks on both Android and iOS has found that Android owners are double as likely to uninstall apps as their iPhone brethren. On average, three out of every ten apps will later be uninstalled, but app developers have more to fear from Android owners than iOS users.
On Android, a massive 43 percent of mobile games are later uninstalled, compared to just 13 percent of iOS games. If you shift focus to shopping apps, Android owners uninstall 21 percent of them, while iOS owners only uninstall 9 percent. Across all app types, the Android uninstall rate is 200 percent higher than for iOS.
Unfortunately, what this ostensibly demonstrates to app developers is that their typical preference for iOS over Android is justified, as iOS owners are much less likely to uninstall their apps after a short time. But why is this?
Uninstall rates primarily boil down to the availability of storage space.
According to AppsFlyer, it is primarily down to the availability of storage space (because iPhones and iPads typically have higher storage capacities than Android devices) and a mixture of lower “app and device quality” on Android generally.
Incentivized advertising also enters the mix on Apple’s side, because incentivized installs are much more common on Android. This type of non-organic installs occurs when you’re enticed to install an app you likely don’t want, usually as a way to bypass an in-game delay or to receive additional lives or in-game currency.
Of all the countries studied by the report, U.S. mobile device owners are the least likely to uninstall these types of apps on either mobile platform, simply because they don’t have to.
U.S. mobile device owners are the least likely to uninstall non-organic apps on either mobile platform.
Again, AppsFlyer suggests the reason more non-organic apps are uninstalled in developing mobile markets is due to lack of available storage.
The report tracked over 500 apps on 20 million devices worldwide over the period between September and October 2016. Uninstall rates were calculated by dividing the total number of uninstalls by the total number of installs.
Do these figures surprise you? Did you guess the reasons why?