New Research Says Millions Of Apps On The Google Play Store And App Store Weren’t Updated In Over Two Years

Pixalate’s new study is making some shocking findings in the world of tech. And that includes how over 1.6MM apps seen on Google Play Store and Apple's App Store weren’t updated in nearly two years.

And you’ll be shocked to learn how the figures continue to increase on the Google Play Store but are declining on the App Store.

For those who may not be aware, Pixalate is one of the world’s leading firms when it comes down to providing protection against fraud. In the same way, it’s known for its privacy features and innovative world of compliance analytics.

Recently, the company went public with its research for the Second Quarter of this year regarding abandoned mobile applications. And the figure of 1.6 million was highlighted, despite all the apps being available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. Here, the word abandoned is linked to not being updated.

In the same way, we saw Pixalate claiming how nearly 306,000 apps fell into the category of being super abandoned. And this means that no update was seen in over five years. Again, the majority arose from the Google Play Store.

As far as the major findings are concerned, there were plenty and we’ve summarized them for your convenience below.

For starters, a greater number of updates were seen for Apple’s apps while Google became more and more abandoned with the passage of time. On average, there were around 200,000 fewer abandoned apps witnessed on Apple this quarter when compared to the previous one. But the opposite was true for the Google Play Store where an increase of 150,000 was observed.

In the same way, there were more apps abandoned than updated this quarter, and those that happened to be registered in nations like Russia or China were more likely seen to be abandoned through the Google Play Store.

You might be shocked to learn how nearly 25% of apps that were declared as abandoned didn’t have any privacy policy that could be detected. This figure rose immensely as compared to that seen in the past six months.

Similarly, around 14% of the apps abandoned included those that transmitted a user’s location through an ad stream feature, as confirmed by the report.

Lastly, around 40% of the applications that are directed to children were abandoned.
The reason why the news is such a big deal in the first place is simple. Abandoned apps are important because they can serve as major threats to both user privacy and security. Also, those apps that regularly update their platforms tend to focus on more innovation and improved versions such as security enhancements and bug fixes.

And as days go by, the issues related to a user’s privacy concerns get more serious. And the problem starts getting complex. Lastly, such improvements are important to advertisers too. They are the ones that take updates into notice, right before they opt to make an investment.




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