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Ask HN: Any other devs seeing decreased android downloads from March 7th on?

30 points by alohahacker ↗ HN
I'm assuming due to the new PLAY icon, app and format that downloads are down.

Users are not used to the new icon and have trouble accepting all the new agreements that you have to accept before using the new play store market.

This is my only guess of a sudden drop in all downloads. I'm down about 50% of what my normal download rate is.

Is anybody else experiencing the same problem?

11 comments

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gregd
IMHO, this is exactly what the issue is. When my market app upgraded to play, there was no indication that the actual name of the app was changing also. I'm running MIUI with the ADW Launcher and the upgrade also didn't remove the market app icon on the desktop.

When I tapped the Market icon to launch the market, nothing happened and after the first tap, the icon disappeared. Thinking WTF? I checked all apps and it was nowhere to be found. Having had this issue before with different launchers where an icon will exist on one launcher but not another, I switched to Go and the Market icon wasn't there either.

I hopped online to download an apk for Market when I stumbled onto something that indicated it might be "Play" now instead. Sure enough, the icon was there all the time, it's just now called "Play".

Not a very user friendly upgrade/name change of the Market app if you ask me.

LCoder
I checked my last three months and March 7th was the largest drop I've had, but my numbers as of today are rebounding.
zrgiu_
It's been constant for me, absolutely no weird change. about 5% drop on the 7th, with a 10% increase on the 8th, but that's a completely normal variation.
dpcan
Thursday and Friday were about 10% lower than normal, but I've seen variations like this often.
[dead] newssy
Around 40% less downloads, seems like something is wrong.
jcfrei
had a little drop with one of my apps, starting march 5th, but seems to be recovering now (down from ~40 to 30 installs per day).
alohahacker
It seems the my numbers are rebounding and slowly creeping back to normal.

Especially since my app has a large user base outside of the US, I'd assume the sudden switch to PLAY was even more confusing for them.

alohahacker
i guess i spoke too soon.

Numbers are still down mostly due to international user base about 50% of pre-play levels.

Deems like the international crowd is just as much or even more confused about the market/play transition and as a result not downloading apps as much.