Mobile Retention Rates
Jun04

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Mobile Retention Rates

Posted by on Jun 4, 2012 in Social Design

Some of you might remember my previous post where I stated that desktop Facebook social games should comply to the 40-20-10 rule if they are to become really successful in terms of high absolute user numbers. The numbers were referring to 1-day, 7-day and 30-day retention in % terms. Usually any game with >1mm DAU complies to this rule. The only exception is really the 1-day retention, where a game can have a somewhat lowerrate, even around 30%, and still be very successful. As mobile (social) games are becoming even bigger thantheir desktop counterparts, I thought that a short post on mobile retention numbers would be good.

Okay let’s get into it. In the past few months I’ve been talking with several different companies with free2play games with over 300K DAU and for iOS mobile games (iPad or the iPhone). From what I have heard it seems that most hit games have >50% 1-day retention, >25% 7-day retention and >15% 30-day retention. As in the case of the 40-20-10 rule, it is very important to have a considerable user base and then comply to these numbers. Many games at launch might have crazily good numbers as the best customers always find the game first. I have heard about games with >65% 1-day retention a couple days after launch (some 1000s DAU) in a good country. The real measure of success is to have high rates when you have a considerable user base. A good rule of thumb is to have at least 300K DAU across the biggest iOS countries. Retention rates vary a lot between countries so it is not enough to comply to the rates in Canada or Australia where retention usually is better than some Asian countries. Noteworthy is also that  the iPad seems to have a few percentage points higher retention than iPhone.

Image Ref: Some Top Grossing F2P games

So in summary, if you have launched an iOS game and have let’s say 300K DAU across 20 of the biggest iOS countries and comply to the “50-25-15″ -rule then you have a winner on your hands. Of course these numbers vary between game types and success depends a lot on apple featuring and the amount of paid acquisition which again depends on monetization rates. Please feel free to contact me personally if you have differing numbers. This is not exact science just some benchmark numbers. Hope you find them useful.