Think about how many times you use gimmicky apps—fart generators, zit poppers—past the first few days after you downloaded them. Now think about news and social networking ones. Big difference, right?
This study by Flurry Inc. shows that news apps are used and retained the most past a 90 day period after purchase, followed up by social networking, book apps, health and weather, and finally, games. Last on the list is Lifestyle, which are those gimmicky apps that you try out once or twice and then delete.
Super obvious, and actually useful if you’re trying to make an app for any of the numerous app marketplaces now. If you’re making a subscription app, you don’t want to make it gimmicky. But if it’s a buy-once sort of thing, gimmicky apps will do fine—your customers already paid, so who cares how many times they use it, right? [GigaOm]
