Recently-released data from iPhone analytics and advertising company Pinch Media showed that users do not use the applications they download via the App Store very often.

Just about 30% of the users who purchase an iPhone application actually use it. The data released also showed another interesting fact: advertisement-supported applications are not very viable.

Pinch Media analyzed over 30 million downloads from Apple's App Store and reached several interesting conclusions. Less than 5% of the people who download an iPhone app actively use it 20 days after they purchased it. In the case of free iPhone apps the situation is much worse.

It doesn’t really matter that the number of app in the App Store is huge, users just don’t seem to find them very gripping. Seven months, 15,000 applications, and 500 million downloads after the service was launched, Apple may realize that the main focus of their marketing campaign is beginning to become, or already became, a bit saturated.

Most people who download an application from the App Store stop using it the very next day. Only 20% of people who download a free application use it the next day, according to the report Pinch Media released on Wednesday at the New York iPhone Developers Meetup.

Only 1% of the application buyers use them after 90 days. This clearly indicates that application developers must think of ways to make apps that hold users more. An indication on the direction to follow might by another fact revealed in the Pinch Media report: the sport-related apps retaining users over the short term, while games are best on the long term.