What is the delivery rate of Mobile Push?

Analysis

The delivery rate for mobile push notifications depends on multiple factors. Because push channels vary widely, it is impractical to test the delivery rate under real-world business or stress conditions, and no exact figure can be provided.

Push channels

The mPaaS Mobile Push service sends messages to devices through the following channels:

• For iOS devices, the mPaaS push backend sends data through the Apple Push Notification service (APNs), which delivers the message to the device.

• For Android devices, if you configure third-party channels such as Huawei or Xiaomi in the mPaaS console, the mPaaS backend sends messages to these vendor servers, which then deliver the messages to the devices.

• In all other scenarios, the device establishes a persistent connection with the mPaaS backend, which serves as the message delivery channel.

Influencing factors

When all push channels — APNs, third-party vendor servers, and the persistent connection — are working correctly, nearly all messages are delivered. However, the actual delivery rate is affected by factors such as:

• Third-party push server failures can cause the mPaaS push operation to fail.

• Communication issues between a third-party push server and the device can prevent message delivery.

• Network connectivity problems between the push server and the internet can prevent message delivery.

• The application's keepalive capability affects the reliability of the persistent connection channel and can impact message delivery.

• Carrier or wireless network failures on the device can prevent message delivery.

• Interference from other applications on the device can disable the push channel and block message delivery.

• Application design and code quality can cause variations in keepalive behavior, which affects delivery.

• Other factors may compromise push channel availability and prevent delivery.

Most of these factors are outside the control of mPaaS Mobile Push, so no official delivery rate data can be provided at the mPaaS layer.

Conclusion

Alipay, built on the same technology, achieves a delivery rate of about 98% by using methods such as mutual keepalive among related applications and whitelist agreements with device manufacturers. These techniques are not always applicable to standard mobile applications. Based on sample data, typical mPaaS applications achieve a delivery rate of 85% to 95%.