With an Active Users / Total Downloads being very high means that the retention is very high.
This means that there is likely to be high return user every day as well.
This means for example while another game may have DAU = 50% of DAU from new downloads and 50% from returning users - with your app, with a large (and rising) installed base, the proportion of the âreturning usersâ will also be high and be increasing all the time.
For a new app, the returning users are few - since the installed base is little (think of it as a reservoir of users who have your app installed and a percentage of them will return to your app every day).
As that reservoir of users increases - and if returning likelihood is say 1% - that returning users per day will rise WITH your Active User number.
This is obvoiusly a âgood thingâ - because it means you can (in time) have a VERY HIGH DAU - even though your new install numbers are modest.
An extreme example - for an app with 100% retention - the Active Users / Total Downloads will be 1.0 (100% retention). If 1% of Active Users return to your app every day - the returning users will be 100 (when Active User number reaches 10,000). When Active User number reaches 100,000, the returning users will be 1000. When Active User number reaches 1,000,000 (since you have 100% retention this means Total Downloads will be 1M also at this point) your returning users will be 10,000 !!
So basically a high retention rate leads to a RISING DAU.
REALISTICALLY, there is also an ATTRITION rate - i.e. users wanting space on phone and uninstalling some apps etc. In reality your DAU will stagnate when the DAU rise rate (from returning users) is matched by the attrition rate. So inevitably Active User graph will level off eventually.
BTW - what can you give some sample:
DAU
session-length
revenue per day
numbers so that we can do a âuniversal constantâ calculation for:
(DAU x session-length-in-seconds) / revenue-per-day
As outlined in this post/thread:
http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/income-reports/3388-anyone-else-here-make-more-than-%2425k-day-2.html#post26711