People Are Downloading Fewer New Apps But Launching Their Existing Apps More, As Market Tightens

Mobile continues to drive online activity, offsetting losses on desktop, but it is becoming harder to encourage consumers to install and use new apps.

These are some of the key takeaways from Adobe’s new Mobile Benchmark Report for 2016, which looks at behavioural trends on mobile in the retail, travel, automotive, media & entertainment and financial verticals.

The report draws insights from 290bn visits to 16,000 sites, and over 85bn app launches and installs.

In terms of growth in website visits, mobile’s 36% increase year-over-year has helped to offset losses in traffic from desktop & tablet, which decreased by 4% and 10%, respectively.

This trend will come to a head in Q1 of 2018, when mobile overtakes desktop in terms of traffic share, Adobe predicts.

Today’s competitive app landscape

Some of the report’s most interesting insights are with regards to the increasingly competitive app landscape.

The data found that the best apps, those in the top 20%, saw excellent growth – 62% launch and 42% install growth year-over-year – whereas average apps registered just 24% and 6% growth.

This competitive landscape is compounded by the fact that consumers are less likely to install new apps, with people launching existing apps more than last year, and new installs lagging behind.

Millenials were the age group most likely to install new apps, compared to other demographics, downloading 33% more apps than the average consumer.

In addition to this, on average, over half of all apps are used less than 10 times, according to Adobe.

To achieve success in the mobile app arena, products must be “useful, usable and best-in-class”, with “not useful” ranked as the most popular reason across all age groups for deleting an app.

Mobile payments not taking off

Other insights include that mobile payments aren’t taking hold as many expected, with 48% of consumers not using any mobile payment methods at all.

Of those that are used, however, Apple Pay is most popular amongst consumers aged 18-24, and Android Pay most used by the 25-34 age group.

iOS vs Android

Comparing the two main operating systems, iOS still brings in the most revenue – 65% compared to Android’s 35% – and saw the highest growth in terms of browsing, visits increasing by 59% year-over-year.

iOS also has the largest share of app launches with 69%, and smartphones completely dominate tablets in terms of usage, accounting for 81% of all app launches.

Adobe’s full Mobile Benchmark Report for 2016 is available on SlideShare here.