App Retention

Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes has been downloaded perhaps 50 million times. It's a top-10 game for revenue. But 95 out of 100 people who install it on Android aren't using the app a month later.

And it is the very best game on Android for mobile user retention.

Mobile user retention is bad, as everyone in the mobile app install business knows. But new data seems to show that Android retention rates -- for top apps -- are half or a third of those on iOS.

Losing 80% of your new users almost immediately was business as usual in 2015. More recently, apps were considered unusually successful if only 70% of the people who originally installed it have left after two weeks.

Today, as a new report by mobile marketing intelligence firm Apptopia shows, mobile user retention has never been worse, and Android is particularly tough for mobile publishers.

The best games on Google Play are all in the single digits for 30-day retention.

Angry Birds Evolution has 3.6% day-30 retention, Marvel Future Fight is at 4.1%, and Gymnastics Superstar is at 3.5%. Apps perform better than games, but just marginally. For example, each of Pandora, Netflix, and Snapchat all have better retention rates than Galaxy of Heroes, but they are all hovering around 6.5% D30 retention.

iOS user retention rates for top apps are about three times better than Android, according to Apptopia's report. This is different from what previous studies have shown.