Fiksu, Inc., the industry's first cost-effective mobile app user acquisition platform spanning the global mobile ecosystem, today reported that mobile app downloads continued to decline in April, while the cost to acquire loyal users picked up.

Movement in the social networking and games categories in the Apple App Store introduced new mobile advertising opportunities and heightened competition, causing the mobile marketing costs to increase.  In particular, Facebook's acquisition of Instagram helped draw increased attention to these hot categories during April.

The Fiksu App Store Competitive Index (which measures the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps) dropped by 4.9 percent to 4.23 million daily downloads, down from 4.45 million in March.   

The Fiksu Cost per Loyal User Index rose by 12.3 percent in April to $1.46, from $1.30 in March.   

The Fiksu Indexes measure monthly fluctuations in competition for rank in the Apple App Store, and the cost to acquire loyal users(1), helping mobile app marketers benchmark their performance against industry averages.

"April's continued downward trajectory of app downloads was expected, as no major events sparked discovery during the month," said Micah Adler, CEO, Fiksu. "Additionally, app marketers continued to scale back their use of robotic install tactics in response to Apple's policy on third-party marketing services."

"However, we observed more aggressive advertising spending as marketers moved out of the first quarter lull and began to seek new opportunities to compete for rank especially in the dynamic social networking and games categories, which experienced volatility during the month," continued Adler.