What is the difference between total installs and active installs in the Android market?

Question

What is the difference between total installs and active installs?

I have 90 total installs for my app and only 47 active installs. What does it mean?

Solution 1

Total installs is how many times your app has been downloaded. Active installs are how many instances of your app are on (actively used?) devices -- i.e. not uninstalled. I imagine that if a user uninstalls your app, then re-installs it, your total download count would go up by two and your active install count by one.

Advertise! Create an ad campaign with something like AdMob (result will vary), find niche forums and android-specific forums like xda-developers, droid-life, etc., that would help more people notice your app. Inside your other apps, ad links to the app you want to promote. Put a share button in your app, or add in social networking. Perhaps promote your app on a 3rd-party app store like Amazon app store.

And don't forget that a poorly designed and rated app is far less likely to be downloaded.

Solution 2

Here are the official definitions for these terms

Total user installs - the total number of unique users that have ever installed this app. We only count one install regardless of how many different devices they installed it on. It includes the users who have later uninstalled the app.

Active user installs - the number of users who have the app currently installed on at least one of their devices.

Solution 3

Total Installs: Total number of times this app has been installed (Also counting those that later uninstalled the app).

Active Installs: Number of installs that are still installed on devices (These people have not yet uninstalled the app).

Solution 4

I don't know exactly about it. But, while observing one of my app statistics this was the observation:

Day 1 : 4 total user installs 1 active device installs

Day 3 : 4 total user installs 4 active device installs

According to the various discussion on web, active install may be related to total number of devices application is installed. But, there is something more to it, as pointed by john Active installs are how many instances of your app are on. So, even if the app is installed but not running it won't count!

Solution 5

Update: Google has changed these terminologies now.

INSTALLS BY USER - This count increases whenever an user installs the app. This increases even if the user just updated the app to a newer version.

UNINSTALLS BY USER - This count increases whenever an user uninstalls the app. This increases even if the user just updated the app to a newer version.

INSTALLS ON ACTIVE DEVICES - This is typically the difference between 'INSTALLS BY USER' and 'UNINSTALLS BY USER'. As a rare case, if the device on which the app is installed is not active in the last 30 days, then those are excluded from this count.

Original Answer (No more relevant):

I understand this question is old but just wanted to share my experience. I noticed the same behavior as Asterios has pointed out in his comments.

When i checked the app dashboard, i found the following: By the term 'Active Installs', they actually mean Active "Device" Installs. Whereas by the term 'Total Installs', they mean Total "User" Installs.

I think some of us are confusing "Active Device Installs" with the term "Active User Installs". These 2 are totally different.

This page has all the terminology explanations: http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139628

That said, I still couldn't make any meaning out of the numbers that I see in my dashboard even though I understand what they are supposed to explain. So, I guess, there is something wrong somewhere in the calculation of those figures.

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