Crittercism Releases Industry-First Mobile App Experience Benchmark Report For iOS

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Crittercism, the leader in mobile App Performance Management (mAPM), today released its "Mobile Experience Benchmark Report – Apple Edition" to establish benchmarks for the performance of iOS apps and Apple devices across the globe. The research was generated by examining data from over one billion monthly active users in more than 120 countries who use the tens of thousands of apps monitored by Crittercism. As a follow-up to the company's first mobile benchmark report, this new iteration focuses on iOS in honor of Apple's recent device unveiling on September 9^th. Notable highlights include insights into how carrier, WiFi, and geographic factors impact iOS performance.

"Apple's recent unveiling is proof that the number of mobile devices will only continue to grow, creating even greater complexity within the mobile ecosystem, said Rob Kwok, CTO and co-founder of Crittercism. "And it's precisely this level of growth and complexity that calls for greater measures to monitor the performance of apps. We compiled this research to provide our customers and the developer community with an industry standard to ensure they are delivering high-performing apps to their customers."

iOS Crash Rates

Crittercism defines mobile app uptime as the percent of app usage that did not experience a crash. Apps should have a crash rate of less than one percent to provide end users with a positive experience.

• Crittercism data found that 46 percent of apps have a crash rate of more than one percent. Of note, "Crashes and Bugs" was Apple's primary reason for rejecting apps from the App Store.
• The oldest devices on the market, the iPhone 4s and the iPad Mini, both have the highest crash rates of 2.2 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.

As more devices and a new iOS are released this month, developers will need to stabilize crash rates across all versions to ensure a seamless user experience.

Fastest/Slowest Major US Carriers

Crittercism's analysis shows that T-Mobile is the fastest major US iOS carrier. In comparison, Sprint and US Cellular were ranked slowest with 1.3x average latencies compared to T-Mobile.

Responsiveness

Responsiveness performance allows developers to see how much faster or slower their app is running than expected, and has a large impact on end-user experience. Users expect responses in less than one second, yet, according to Crittercism's Report, five percent of service calls that apps depend on experience higher latency and 46 percent have longer than 500 millisecond latency.

Average Cloud Service Use

The Apple Benchmark Report found the average iOS app depends on more than six cloud services, such as Facebook for login, Amazon Web Services for storage and Flurry for analytics. Crittercism found 52 percent of iOS apps use more than five services. In order to prevent iOS apps from responding slowly, the services they depend on must also work smoothly. Therefore, the more cloud services an app relies on, the higher the chance of performance issues.

Performance Around the World

Expanding apps to new geographies introduces location-specific factors that impact user experience, as responsiveness and uptime are greatly affected by the location of the end user.

• Looking at the most populous US cities, Cleveland has the slowest iOS WiFi responsiveness, while Virginia Beach had the fastest.
• In regards to carrier responsiveness, Raleigh is fastest, with Kansas City being the slowest.
• Out of all major cities worldwide, Yokohama and Tokyo see the fastest iOS WiFi and carrier responsiveness.
• Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam has the slowest WiFi responsiveness.

To download the full version of Crittercism's Mobile Experience Benchmark Report – Apple Edition, please visit http://crittercism.com/benchmark/.

About Crittercism

Crittercism provides the world's leading mobile application performance management (mAPM) solution and enables enterprises to accelerate their mobile business. The company's solution monitors every aspect of mobile app performance and provides a real-time global view of app and transaction metrics across iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, Hybrid and HTML5 apps. The company's investors include Google Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures, InterWest Partners and Accenture. Learn more at http://www.crittercism.com.

SOURCE Crittercism