Researchers Warn Businesses That Mobile Apps Are "Disposable"

With the rise of smartphones, mobile apps may be all the rage, but many users are pretty fickle when it comes to the software on their handset, regularly deleting programs.

This finding comes from a piece of research conducted by web hosting outfit 34SP.com, which surveyed 1000 UK mobile users and found that two in five said they deleted apps from their smartphone “often”.

One in five noted that they regularly delete apps within three months of downloading them, leaving software on mobile devices looking pretty disposable in many respects. That’s not much of a surprise, though, particularly given the storage constraints of mobiles, and especially on cheaper devices with small amounts of on-board memory.

Daniel Foster, technical director and co-founder of 34SP.com, commented: “Increasingly businesses are investing a lot of resource into creating innovative apps for their customers, in the hope to attract them in an extremely saturated market. So it’s disappointing to find that for a lot of consumers it isn’t long before they actually delete an app from their device.

“There could be a number of reasons why a consumer might delete an app. It’s not uncommon for users to hit storage capacity on their phones, for example, and apps are often the first thing to go before music, videos, or photos.”

Foster further advised: “Offering regular perks to those that download an app might be the only way to keep a consumer that isn’t necessarily loyal to a brand engaged, to prevent them from deleting the app.”

Further snippets from the research included the fact that 22 per cent of those questioned said they owned more than one mobile device, and a quarter indicated that they use their phone for a number of everyday tasks including banking, online grocery shopping, and booking holidays.