Marketing firm AppsFlyer has released its mobile retention (retention rate) report for Q3 2022.
The platform’s average retention on Android has fallen for the second year in a row. In the last year alone, 14-day retention dropped 6.5% (from 4.6% to 4.3%) and 30-day gamer retention dropped 10.3% (from 2.9% to 2.6%).
Player retention has dropped for 30 days.
The company’s analysts attributed this drop to increased competition in the Android market. According to them, the wide choice has resulted in users being more easily distracted and generally less loyal to any particular app. As for the platform’s average retention on iOS, there is no similar decline. However, there is also no growth. On an annual basis, the 14-day retention is down 1.5% (to 6.7%) and the 30-day is down 4% (to 4.3%).
Overall, the situation has stabilized, but AppsFlyer believes there is still reason to be concerned. Maybe next year the 30-day retention rate on iOS will drop below 4%. Talking about overall game retention (based on total data for both platforms) is quite difficult. 30-day retention fell 10% year-on-year in the third quarter and down 20% year-on-year (to 2.4%).
Stats report on Android.
AppsFlyer does not share information about the countries with the highest average retention rates. This data often correlates with countries with a high average test. So, according to the marketing firm, these are the top 30-day retention countries across countries:
5.1% – Japan; 3.7% – Canada; 3.6% – Korea and Australia.
Stats report on iOS.
In the US, the average 30-day retention rate is 3.1%. For comparison, in China the rate is just 1.3% (much less than in Russia, where it is 2.2%). AppsFlyer experts want game developers to have a key retention tool published by the publisher, applicable to many game developers in the past. On average, game companies that used this tool in the third quarter of this year increased their retention by 123% because of timely adjustments by tracking fast or long-term game players.