"Android - immediate distribution"<p>Another important metric is how quickly users start using the update. When you measure using this metric Android is anything but instant.<p>Web apps "check for updates and install" every time you use them. Users are forced to update and depending on the site within a matter of minutes nearly everybody will be using the new version.<p>Android apps don't go through a review process, but it still takes a few minutes for the servers to get the update. It will take an hour or two for every phone to get notified of the update (it's not pushed) and give the user a notification. It will then be even longer for the user to push the button and receive your beautiful new code. There are a few users with "automatic updating" but it's not enabled by default. The majority of your user base will take a while to finish migrating over. I would love if anybody here had real numbers on this, our app only just started reporting version numbers so we haven't been able to collect the data yet.<p>There are exceptions. The Facebook app renders webpages so most updates happen instantly, but when they update one of the native sections there's still a long wait before everyone has it.