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Authors
Affiliations
1 Department of CSE, V.R.S. College of Engineering and Technology, Arasur, Villupuram, IN
Source
Software Engineering, Vol 6, No 9 (2014), Pagination: 262-269
Abstract
Mobile applications (apps) are software developed for use on mobile devices and made available through app stores. App stores are highly competitive markets where developers need to cater to a large number of users spanning multiple countries. This work hypothesizes that there exist country differences in mobile app user behavior and conducts one of the largest surveys to date of app users across the world, in order to identify the precise nature of those differences. The survey investigated user adoption of the app store concept, app needs, and rationale for selecting or abandoning an app. We collected data from more than 15 countries, including USA, China, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, UK, Italy, Russia, India, Canada, Spain, Australia, Mexico, and South Korea. Analysis of data provided by 4,824 participants showed significant differences in app user behaviors across countries, for example users from USA are more likely to download medical apps, users from UK and Canada are more likely to be influenced by price, users from Japan and Australia are less likely to rate apps. Analysis of the results revealed new challenges to market-driven software engineering related to packaging requirements, feature space, quality expectations, app store dependency, price sensitivity, and ecosystem effect.
Keywords
Data Cleaning, Requirements/Specifications, Market-Driven Software Engineering, Mobile Application Development, User Requirements, Survey Research, App User Behavior, Software Product Lines, Software Ecosystems.
