With over 2 million apps both on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in 2024, the mobile app market is becoming increasingly competitive and harder to penetrate for new apps. As an example, data retrieved using AppFigures shows that a search for the keyword ‘Running’ shows a competitiveness index (i.e. how hard it is to beat the top results of the keyword search) of 94% and yields over 11,000 results.
In this context, companies need to constantly iterate and improve their apps to deliver as much value as possible to their users, perform better than their competitors and stay relevant in a crowded market.
In the mobile app ecosystem, we often see companies release new versions of their apps very frequently to address bugs, add new features, and act on user feedback. While this sounds like a good approach in theory, can releasing your app too often be detrimental to your app's success?
Correlation between release frequency and app success
A study conducted by Canadian researchers in 2019 about the opinion of users and developers about different release practices showed that, while developers more often opt for a time-based release strategy (e.g. releasing an update every two weeks), users generally prefer apps that are updated more recently but may find frequent updates annoying, even leading them in some occasions to not download the app at all.
Why? Some of these same users surveyed by the study mentioned that they had experienced issues such as crashes, an increase in memory usage, or even functionality loss after an app update. Understandably, such issues generated a sense of distrust towards future updates from that app or, in the worst case, lead them to uninstall the app altogether.
Another study conducted by researchers at Peking University in 2018 also showed some very interesting correlations between the frequency of updates and the app's ratings. The study analyzed 17,820 apps from the Google Play Store and found that high-ranked apps tend to receive positive feedback from frequent updates, while low-ranked apps are more likely to receive negative feedback.
This is known as the Matthew Effect and it means that if you have built a great product that is already loved by many, frequent updates can help you maintain and even improve your app's rating and accelerate your growth. However, if your app is not well-received, frequent updates will usually result in more negative reviews.
Quality over quantity
What’s obvious from both studies is that the effect of frequent updates on your users’ sentiment towards your app is directly correlated to the quality of such updates.
This common theme across both studies aligns very well with the nature of the app market, where users tend to be less forgiving with crashes and poor user experience than in other ecosystems such as the web. In fact, in such a competitive market with plenty of alternatives — and given how unique and slow mobile releases are — it is crucial to ensure that each release is thoroughly tested and validated before being pushed to the app stores.
Furthermore, contrary to what occurs in back-end or web environments where users have no control over which version of the app they are using, most mobile operating systems allow users to opt out of automatic updates. While this setting does not allow users to opt out of automatic updates for specific apps, a bad experience with a faulty update could lead your users to change this setting at a system level or, even worse, delete your app altogether. This is another reason why you should prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to updates, to ensure your users trust you and are excited to get the latest version of your app.
While the notion of releasing updates frequently may seem contradictory to the question of whether there is such a thing as shipping too often, the key takeaway is that consistent, time-based release schedules —adapting the pace to your team’s needs— are essential for maintaining quality and providing value to your users. For mature teams, frequent updates can be highly beneficial, fostering continuous improvement and responsiveness to user needs and further improving how the app is received by their user base.
However, speed should not come at the cost of quality. The danger with shipping too often lies in overloading each release and not allowing engineers and stakeholders to have enough time to work and test features thoroughly. This can lead to developer burnout, increased bugs, and, ultimately, user frustration. The best approach is to maintain a steady rhythm of updates, ensuring each release is focused, manageable, and well-executed.
