How often do you uninstall apps?

Appsflyer recently looked into how often users on Android uninstall apps vs their iOS counterparts. The results (gathered from 500 apps on 20 million devices between September and October) were astounding, with Android users twice as likely to uninstall Android apps shortly after downloading them.

Why is this? A number of factors could be at play here:

• Ignoring the law of averages, Android’s higher volume could lead to more reported uninstallations than iOS. This possibility might only account for a small fraction of the discrepancy, though.
• Android users are likely to have more devices with lesser storage space, especially those in developing markets where phones are often released with 8GB of storage, or even less. As such, those users feel the need to uninstall apps more aggressively.
• iOS is historically the more lucrative platform when it comes to in-app purchases and revenue, so Android developers often turn to incentive-based installation offerings for, say, awarding a user with in-game currency for downloading and trying a new game. Once they get their goods and if they don’t like the app or game, uninstall. This practice is prevalent on iOS as well, but it may be magnified on Android due to increased user base.
• The barrier of entry to development on Android is much more forgiving compared to iOS, and the result is a lot more developers and a lot more apps. Not all of these apps are great. Some are terribly buggy and are begging to be uninstalled and replaced at a moment’s notice. Even the biggest developers in the world (coughFACEBOOKcough) are guilty of this.

Anyway, the point is it’s hard to pinpoint why, exactly, people would uninstall so many apps without asking them, so we’re asking you: how often do you uninstall apps, and why?

Techies like us might be the most active users in this practice, with many power users opting to try out multiple apps for one service or need before settling on one they like.

For instance, before I caved to Twitter’s urge to get more people off third-party apps (Twitter adds new features so fast these days, and the app isn’t totally crap anymore!), I was trying out every single new Twitter app to see if a new king could be crowned. The loser, of course, gets a swift trip to the uninstall bin of doom. Now take that one scenario, and apply it to multiple dozens of other services I use — I install and uninstall a ton of apps, and it tends to be an ongoing cycle.

That behavior isn’t exclusive to Android users, though in my experience iOS users don’t bounce around from app to app quite as often as we do. When they find something they like, it’s hard to pull them away and persuade them to try an alternative.

Of course, my experience is only my experience and I’m hardly a model for global research data. Regardless, we want to hear from you. What moves you to uninstall an app? How often do you find yourself doing it? If you’re a multi-platform user, do you find yourself uninstalling more apps on one platform vs the other? Hit us up below!

[AppsFly]