Android app uninstallation event for analytics

Question

I wonder what are the ways/patterns to detect app uninstallation for any kind of analytics on android? I know the limitations of ACTION_PACKAGE_REMOVED intent - not received by application being removed. I am using flurry at the moment and have also discovered that they do not provide any kind of support for deinstallation events. This type of event is definitely something you want in your analytics but so far have not found any clear solution. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Here's a possible approach. In your Android app, implement support for receiving push messages from Google Cloud Messaging (GGM). Then, implement a server that sends GCM "are you there?" messages to all users at regular intervals (e.g. daily). Google's GCM service will notify your service of all targeted recipients which no longer have your app installed. To correlate uninstall data with other metrics such as app version, user demographics, date of installation, etc, collect that data in your app and supply it to your server when registering for GCM messages. Then when you get notified of an uninstall, match it with the installation data. From there, you could report it to a service like Google Analytics for additional slicing and dicing, graphical visualization, date range comparison, etc.