Mobile app downloads increased slightly in May, while the cost to acquire loyal users dipped during the month, according to the latest Fiksu App Store Competitive Index from mobile app user acquisition platform Fiksu, which measures the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free US iPhone apps.

Downloads increased by 7.3 per cent to 4.54m  daily downloads, up from 4.23m in April. The Fiksu Cost per Loyal User Index decreased by 13.7 per cent in May to $1.26 (£0.80), down from $1.46 in April.  
The Fiksu Indexes measure monthly fluctuations in competition for rank in the Apple App Store, and the cost to acquire loyal users, and are designed to help mobile app marketers benchmark their performance against industry averages. Fiksu has been tracking the fluctuations for the past 12 months.

“In May, marketers began gearing up for the summer months which, historically, have presented increased opportunity for app promotion,” says Fiksu CEO, Micah Adler. “Yet amid concern around Apple’s speculated deprecation of UDID (Unique Device Identifier), compounded by a host of confusing, alternative UDID-less tracking technologies, we observed inertia. It appears that brands’ caution may have contributed to the dip in acquisition costs.”  

Fiksu currently records more than 1bn app events per day. This includes app actions, such as launches, registrations and in-app purchases, as well as real-time bidding requests. The data is used to drive real-time optimization of ad campaigns.

There’s more information, including an infographic showing the ebbs and flows in app store dynamics and mobile app marketing costs, here.