As more and more developers start to enter the mobile application space — be it for the iPhone, Android, the BlackBerry, the Palm Pre, or any of the others — standing out in a crowded field of applications becomes more and more important.

For many developers, the end-goal is just to get their apps downloaded or purchased. However, as the space becomes larger, staying visible and keeping your application in-use will also become critical to ensure future sales or developments.

Mobile analytics firm Flurry (which we've covered in the past) released a study last week analyzing mobile application retention trends and what impact pricing and application type has on usage and app loyalty. Flurry studied user retention across 19 different application categories over a 90-day period on a number of different application platforms. They monitored how frequently a consumer returned to an app after downloading it within 30, 60 and 90 days, as well as how often any user accessed any application it had downloaded in the past over a 7-day period.









In its sample, Flurry found that the most-frequently used applications over the longest period of time were news, reference, productivity and navigation apps. This makes sense, if you consider that accessing the news, looking up information and getting directions from a map are the types of activities that many people like to do while on-the-go. These applications are not only useful, but they can be ideal for the mobile platform.

On the opposite end of the spectrum (or graph, as it were), the applications that had the least usage over time were what Flurry calls "Entertainment" apps. "Entertainment" doesn't mean games, it means one-off, single-purpose novelty applications. Things like Fart applications or IQ tests or flashlights or other toys. As can be expected, these applications are often used just a few times and then abandoned.

Why Is Retention Data Important?

You might find app retention data interesting, but if you are a developer or an app producer, why is this information important? Because knowing usage patterns for an app can help determine pricing, the viability of add-ons, and in the future as app stores evolve, upgrades.

With the iPhone 3.0 SDK, Apple introduced the ability to do in-app purchases, so that developer's can offer additional content. Knowing how your applications are used (or not used) can help determine if add-ons will add value or long-term usage, or if that development time would be better focused elsewhere.

For developers trying to decide between an ad-supported or direct-pricing model, knowing how often and over what period of time a user uses your apps can show what might be more economically viable.

Ultimately, this sort of data can inform developers about how consumers use their products, which in turn can help better products get developed.

What is Your App Loyalty

Are you a use once and then delete kind of app tester or do you have favorites you use over an extended period of time? Let us know in the comments!