It’s no secret that I use Flurry to anonymously count the number of times my apps get downloaded.

Android Market’s download stats have in the past been completely wrong, while rival markets generally “double count” downloads, including both updates and new installs in their totals.

Then there’s the figures I’m seeing for my latest app, Transmutation.

Android Market: 14
Slide Me: 194
Opera Market: 133According to the official stats, it sank like a stone Android Market, but that’s not surprising because that’s how Google likes it. On the other two markets it’s actually getting some interest.

Meanwhile, Flurry says otherwise, with a total of 66 downloads recorded for the same period of time, which implies that Opera and SlideMe are claiming multiples of the total number of downloads that Flurry knows about. Flurry’s stats also show that those 66 people spent a combined total of more than 14 hours playing the game, or over 12 minutes each.

Normally I’d say Flurry is correct and the other two markets need to go back to school to learn to count. However, for the same period, Admob is reporting 1,345 ad requests. Each ad is shown for one minute, so if there really were only 66 downloads of the app, then each install has been played for up to 20 minutes, more than twice as long as Flurry reports.

If however we use the total number of installs as given by the markets involved, then there’s been 341 users that have seen 1,345 ads, giving an average of four minutes of play time per install.

For the first time I have reason to doubt Flurry’s stats, but only for Transmutation. I’ve closely tracked Flurry’s figures for Solar Explorer and have totals that separate Android Market from the rest. Since Google fixed most of their problems, Flurry’s daily figure has been pretty close to the one reported by Android Market.

Something weird is going on, and as usual, it’s a guessing game to figure out what.

At least there’s one positive to draw from this: The worst case scenario is that the average person who downloads Transmutation spends four minutes playing the game, which is a pretty good result.