AWS customers can now use Amazon Mobile Analytics to monitor app usage and revenue from apps within the time frame of around an hour to get started. With its pay-as-you-go model and free startup tier Amazon looks set to shake up the mobile analytics market.  

Amazon Mobile Analytics, included in the AWS Mobile SDK, enables you to collect and visualize app usage data at scale. While alternative mobile app analytics solutions deliver usage data several hours after the events occur, Amazon's new service is designed to deliver usage reports within 60 minutes, i.e. almost real time, of receiving data from an app so that you can act on the data more quickly.

Amazon Mobile Analytics is free for up to 100 million events per month (an event corresponds to activity in your app such as the start of a session or an in-app purchase) and supports iOS, Android, and Fire OS. Beyond this the cost is $1 per million events. 

Amazon Mobile Analytics automatically calculates and updates the following metrics as data is received:

• Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), and New Users
• Sticky Factor (DAU divided by MAU)
• Session Count and Average Sessions per Daily Active User
• Average Revenue per Daily Active User (ARPDAU) and Average Revenue per Paying Daily Active User (ARPPDAU)
• Day 1, 3, and 7 Retention and Week 1, 2, and 3 Retention
• Custom Events

These metrics are provided via six reporting tabs in the AWS Management Console : Overview, Active Users, Sessions, Retention, Revenue, and Custom Events. 

Overview: Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), New Users, Sticky Factor, Total Daily Sessions, 1-Day Retention, Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU), Paying Daily Active Users, and Average Revenue Per Paid Daily Active User (ARPPDAU).

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The other tabs are:

Active Users: Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), New Users, and Sticky Factor.

Sessions: Total Sessions (number of time your app was used on a particular day) and Average Number of Sessions Per Daily Active User (DAU).

Revenue: Paying Daily Active Users, Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU), and Average Revenue Per Paid Daily Active User (ARPPDAU), Paying Monthly Active Users, Average Revenue Per Monthly Active User (ARPMAU), and Average Revenue Per Paid Monthly Active User (ARPPMAU).

Retention: Daily retention (includes 1-day, 3-day, and 7-day retention) and weekly retention (includes 1-week, 2-week, and 3-week retention) for new users.

Custom Events: Custom events specific to your app that you define (such as when users tap a button, or each time a player finishes a level).

You can also use the Amazon Mobile Analytics REST API directly for customization. 

Amazon is also keen to point out that as a paid-for service it doesn't own your data and hence doesn't share it with other companies or make use of it internally. 

For the programmer the easy of use is one aspect, but for the small startup the key benefit is that you can get started with up to 100 million events for free. If you do get to pay Amazon $1 for 101 million events then the chances are you can afford it. This is the right sort of pricing model - you pay only if you are successful - for this type of non-essential service. 

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