Why Google Play's Active Device Installs not equal to total daily device installs minus total daily device uninstalls? [closed]

Question

The difference between Active Device Installs and total installs on Google Play's stats (formerly Android market) is easily explained by users uninstalling. However I would expect the active device installs to equal to the total device installs less the total uninstalls. But looking at the daily device installs and uninstalls across several of my apps this does not seem to be the case.

What I'm seeing:

1. Go to the stats page on Google Play export to CSV for an app
2. Open in excel and create a column that is daily_device_installs - daily_device_uninstalls . This should be the net daily installs.
3. Due to discrepancies in when data is sent you might not expect this column to equal the difference in active_device_installs between subsequent days. But over a long period of time, the difference in active installs should be close to the sum of the net installs columns. It's not.

In one extreme case over a couple of months the active_device_installs shows an increase of only 40k while the sum of the net installs is 100k.

Google Play help is not much use on this: http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139628

Are others seeing the same thing? Which stat should we trust or am I missing something and tehy are consistent?

Answer 1

i experience the same issue into my developer account. The number of (Daily Active Installs - Daily active uninstalls) for a period of time of 30 days is 3 times less than the number of (Active Installs Day 1 - Active Installs Day 30)

The Google play documentation says:

"For data about the current installed population of your app, refer to “active” or “total” metrics rather than trying to sum up daily metrics. The daily metrics are meant to provide immediate feedback about your app’s recent installations. “Total” and “active” metrics will give you the most accurate picture -- they take into account app reinstallation, data that is received after the daily report is generated, devices that are no longer active, and more."

But 3 times difference on numbers is very big and most importantly very confusing

any other experience?