The app market is growing. In fact, according to recent research by Gartner, mobile applications downloaded from online stores will be a $58 billion worldwide business by 2014. This is great news for developers, as long as they get the app right.
According to this Appolicious report, app users are known to download an app, use it once and toss it away. Localytics, a Boston-based software company, has reported that 26 percent of the apps downloaded in 2010 were only used once.
Brian Suthoff, with Localytics, relied on real-time app analytics to analyze thousands of apps for Android OS, iPhone (News - Alert) and other major platforms. He stressed that first impressions are key to achieving success with apps.
“The good news is that customers seem very willing to give new apps a try—it took only two weeks for eighth grader Robert Nay’s Bubble Ball to unseat Angry Birds,” he blogged. “The bad news is that 26 percent of the time customers never give the app a second try. So make that first impression count and look beyond download statistics to understand real customer engagement.”
Suthoff finds that having 74 percent of new customers use an app more than once is encouraging. He suggests that publishers gain a better understanding of their loyal users in order to build a more profitable business in such a competitive market. He noted that knowing what dedicated customers look like helps app publishers to better target advertising and marketing campaigns, as well as measure their success.
In a ReadWriteWeb report, Sarah Perez noted research confirms that downloads on their own are not enough to determine what is best. She wrote: “If a customer never opens your app or abandons it after only one (or two, or three...) uses, then high download numbers really mean you have a high churn rate.”
CEO of mobile notifications provider Urban Airship (News - Alert), Scott Kveton, shared that there is only a 5 percent retention rate on free apps after 30 days. According to Perez, the numbers from Localytics are actually better news than the industry expected if Kveton’s assumption is accurate.
As app developers and publishers improve their ability to appeal to the masses, Internet traffic on mobile devices is likely to continue to increase. In fact, Cisco (News 
- Alert) recently shared that according to its own research, this traffic could increase 26-fold by 2015.
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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Tammy Wolf
