Google Play Staged Rollout Distribution Group

Question

I'm trying to figure out the distribution group for Google Play staged rollouts. I've read the support page, which states the following:

You can release an app update to production using a staged rollout, where you release an app update to a percentage of your users and increase the percentage over time.

New and existing users are eligible for to receive updates from staged rollouts. Staged rollouts can only be used for app updates, not when publishing an app for the first time.

Does the "new and existing users" mean that the application will be available to a percentage of:

1. The entire google play store
2. All users that can see the application in the play store
3. All existing users

Based on the documentation, it sounds like it's #2, but I was hoping someone who had experience using staged rollouts would be able to confirm?

Answer 1

If you tell Google Play to roll out a new version of your application to 10% of users, that means that if tomorrow you have 100 users (either new or existing users), 10 of them will get the newer version.

In other words, there are two ways for users to get the latest version of your app that you are rolling out:

• If the user already has your app, there is about a 10% chance that the Play Store will prompt them to update.
• If the user is a new user, there is a 10% chance that they will download the new version instead of the old version.

Your options 1 and 2 don't make a lot of sense, because if Google only made your app available to 10% of either all the Play Store or 10% of people who could download your app, then there's a reasonable chance that every single one of your users is in the 90% that can see the app but didn't get the upgrade, resulting in 0 users using the new version and thus defeating the purpose of doing a staged rollout.