Poor connectivity damages the mobile app business

With new extended reality (XR) and augmented reality offerings imminent — most likely from Apple and Meta — that need fast low latency connections to connect to cloud services, good quality connectivity is becoming even more important, on Wi-Fi as well as with mobile. 

With poor mobile connectivity, users spend 20% less time in each app session while with poor Wi-Fi it’s an even greater 38% less time. After seven days, app retention rates are 49% lower for users that have seen consistently poor connectivity. Poor connectivity is commonplace. Opensignal data demonstrates that in 29% of mobile app sessions users experienced a poor signal. With Wi-Fi, 11% of app sessions had a poor signal.

Poor connectivity directly affects app revenues as well as increasing user dissatisfaction. Almost all apps are monetized either through in-app purchases or advertising. Both business models require people to continue using the app. Data.ai (formerly App Annie) reports 2022 total global app revenues were $336bn for advertising and $167bn for app store spend, of which almost all was either in-app purchases or paid subscriptions. Read the full analysis here

5G beats Public Wifi for gaming as well as speed

For a long time, users have assumed that Wifi always offers a superior experience to cellular connectivity, when using the Internet on mobile devices, either at home or in public places. Improvements to mobile technology with the evolution to 5G mean that this is no longer the case. Read the full analysis here.