AppLovin Pulls Mobile Product As Backdoor App Install Allegations Mount

Adtech firm AppLovin on Wednesday confirmed it has shuttered a mobile software product that was allegedly enabling downloads of apps onto user devices without consent. 

A company spokesperson said in a statement shared with ADWEEK that AppLovin eliminated Array last quarter. The product enabled device makers like Samsung and service carriers like T-Mobile to surface on-device app recommendations and allow seamless direct app downloads. 

The spokesperson said AppLovin decided to close down Array, a move first reported by Bloomberg, because the product “was not economically viable.”

However, chief financial officer Matthew Stumpf last year cited Array, alongside a handful of other parts of the business, as key to AppLovin’s revenue growth. The LinkedIn profile of former AppLovin product lead Jia-Hong Xu previously claimed that Array’s direct download ad function was “the company’s top revenue driver.”

AppLovin has reassigned workers on the Array team to its burgeoning e-commerce business, the spokesperson said. 

Founded in 2012, AppLovin helps developers monetize mobile apps with ads. Though it’s become a Wall Street darling—with a market cap swelling to around $207 billion—it’s faced growing scrutiny this year, due in large part to a smattering of short seller reports in the spring and summer. These reports, from firms including Fuzzy Panda Research, Sakura Research, and Culper Research, detailed unsubstantiated allegations ranging from  “deceptive, predatory” advertising to artificially inflated revenue through round-tripping practices. 

Array’s closure comes on the heels of new research this week published by ad fraud researcher and former Harvard professor Ben Edelman—who also has a short position on AppLovin. Edelman has unearthed instructions within AppLovin source code that he says appear to instigate autonomous downloads of external mobile apps when users engage with an in-app ad powered by AppLovin.

He also observed what he described to ADWEEK as “very unusual idiosyncrasies,” including language indicating a five-second countdown timer linked to an ‘autoInstallDelayMs’ instruction that appears to be designed for triggering app installs.

Edelman also compiled 208 posts from users complaining that apps were appearing on their devices even though they didn’t believe they had consented to downloading them. Some complaints, reviewed independently by ADWEEK, indicated that these apps automatically downloaded after users clicked on an ad, when trying to exit an ad, and even in cases where users claimed they did not touch their screens at all. Edelman believes unwanted downloads stem from the Array product, though the allegation is unproven. 

Edelman has conducted tests on a variety of his own devices as well, but has never witnessed an automatic app install via an AppLovin ad in these tests, he said. 

“I never managed to get it to happen to me,” he said. “That’s okay. I’ve never seen a meteor, but I know that meteors exist through the scientific process. And so, too, here I have a scientific process that is sufficient to reach conclusions, even if I’d rather see the meteor with my own eyes.”

AppLovin’s spokesperson rejected Edelman’s claims outright, saying: “We have never installed an application without explicit user consent.” They said AppLovin’s app ads redirect to app stores and “that’s where a user consents to download something or not.”

A T-Mobile spokesperson said in a statement that “T-Mobile does not install apps on customers’ devices without their consent.” They added that the mobile carrier ran a pilot program with AppLovin that allowed users to consensually download apps from ads, but that the pilot has ended. Samsung did not respond to a request for comment.

In March, AppLovin hired lawyers to investigate claims made by various short sellers.

AppLovin is currently being probed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its data collection practices and allegations that the company breached contracts with some partners in an attempt to bolster its ads business, Reuters reported last week.

Despite swirling allegations about its business, AppLovin’s stock has continued to surge this year, up nearly 75% since the start of 2025.

Update Oct. 15 at 2:57 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from T-Mobile.