If your mobile apps share or collect personal information, you risk losing customers, a new report has found.

More than half of mobile application users have uninstalled or avoided certain apps due to concerns about the way personal information is shared or collected by the app, according to a survey by Pew Research. The report is based on findings from its Internet & American Life Project for which 2254 adults in the USA were interviewed in the period March 15 - April 3, 2012.

88 percent of U.S. adults now own cell phones, and 43 percent say they download apps to their phones, but consumers are increasingly wary about providing personal information.

The survey revealed that 54 percent of app users have decided to not install an app when they discovered how much personal information they would need to share in order to use it. In addition, 30 percent of app users have uninstalled an app that was already on their cell phone when they realized it was collecting personal information that they didn’t want to share.

Detailed information shows that it is those in the age group 18-29 who are the most likely to use apps on their phones. Men are slightly more likely to download apps than women and  males users are significantly more keen to uninstall the apps they have downloaded through concerns over personal information.

Overall the proportion of users who have either uninstalled or refused to install an app because of concerns about data privacy is 57 percent of all app users. That’s a sizable share of the market that will reject your app if you expect them to hand over their personal information.

More Information

Privacy and Data Management on Mobile Devices

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