CycleStreets Android app is one year old

Jez, the Lead Developer of our Android app, writes:

The CycleStreets Android app when live a year ago yesterday. At the end of that first day there were a mighty 4 of what the Android Market calls “active device installs”. As of June 19, there are 10,089.

Over the first six months, installs climbed pretty quickly for the first three months or so, then gradually plateaued at around 5500 active installs for the two months leading up to Christmas. Then Santa arrived. People obviously spent Boxing Day recovering, and then on the 27th of December installs ticked up and continued on a straight line of about 30 new installs a day ever since.

According to the stats, about half of all installs are on Android version 2.3.3. Installs on Android 4 have gone from under 100 at the start of March to over 2,000 now. The majority of new installs are now on Android 4.

95 people have rated the app in the Google Play Market, 79 of them rating it 4 or 5 stars. The people that like tend to say things like “awesome” and “excellent”. The more helpful feedback suggests the biggest problem people have is slow tile downloading. The less useful picks up on some specific quirk of routing locally (“Will not send me down ANY CYCLE PATH, even ones that are clearly show on the map”) or overlook a feature it actually has (“many missing features including a proper way to save routes”).

Other than “people are installing the app on their new phones and they seem to like it” I’m not entirely sure what these numbers actually tell us.

For me, it’s been an interesting 18 months. I only started writing stuff for Android by accident, and I can’t really remember how or why I offered to pitch into the CycleStreets App. I’m glad I did – it’s been good.

Thanks :) Wonder where we’ll be this time next year.

Jez