You Downloaded That App, But Do You Ever Use It?

Survey shows most apps end up being deleted.

by Lesley Kennedy • MORE.com Reporter

We don’t know about you, but our smartphone is littered with apps. From news to shopping to games to dieting to social media, we hear about something cool, and, well, they just make it so easy to download, it seems a shame not to grab whatever sounds interesting.

But, USA Today reports, actually spending time using all those apps is a whole other ball game. According to the newspaper, a recent survey from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project shows just 68 percent of smartphone owners say they use up to five apps at least once a week, and 17 percent report using no apps at all.

“The novelty wears off,” Pew researcher Kristen Purcell tells USA Today.

In fact, Mobilewalla’s Anindya Datta tells the newspaper that when apps are kept on phones just 30 percent of the time, they’re deemed a success, and that 80 to 90 percent of apps end up getting deleted.

“We are constantly deleting them,” Datta, founder of the app analytic company, tells USA Today. “That’s why the number of downloads is a very poor measure of how popular an app is.”

So with all those apps out there—some good, some not so hot—we want to know: Which apps do you use a lot, and which ones do you wish you had skipped? Leave your comments below!

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First Published January 31, 2012

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