How is the "Active Installs" count/percentage in the Android "Developer Console" calculated?

Question

The Android Market Developer Console shows two numbers for your submitted application; "total" and "active installs". What exactly does the "active installs" number mean? Is it affected by application upgrades?

For example:

1. 500 users install v1.0 of an app
2. v2.0 of the app is released and all 500 people upgrade via the Market.
3. Assume no one uninstalls.

Does that yield a "total" of 1000 because the APK was downloaded 1000 times...but an "Active Installs" of 500 (50%) because, in the end, only 500 people are running the app? Does an upgrade get counted as an uninstall followed by an install?

Answer 1

1 person installing your app = 1 download. Upgrades do not add to this.

So lets say you have 500 users. That's 500 downloads. Number of upgrades has no effect on this number.

Now lets say 100 of those users uninstall your app from their phone. Now you only have 400 (80%) active installs.

I think what a lot of people don't get is that your phone posts back to the Android Market when you do an uninstall. This helps with metrics tracking and is also required in order for the paid app 24 hour trial period to work correctly.