research-article

An Explorative Study of the Mobile App Ecosystem from App Developers' Perspective

Authors:

Jason HongAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '17: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web

Pages 163 - 172

https://doi.org/10.1145/3038912.3052712

Published: 03 April 2017 Publication History

Abstract

With the prevalence of smartphones, app markets such as Apple App Store and Google Play has become the center stage in the mobile app ecosystem, with millions of apps developed by tens of thousands of app developers in each major market. This paper presents a study of the mobile app ecosystem from the perspective of app developers. Based on over one million Android apps and 320,000 developers from Google Play, we analyzed the Android app ecosystem from different aspects. Our analysis shows that while over half of the developers have released only one app in the market, many of them have released hundreds of apps. We classified developers into different groups based on the number of apps they have released, and compared their characteristics. Specially, we have analyzed the group of aggressive developers who have released more than 50 apps, trying to understand how and why they create so many apps. We also investigated the privacy behaviors of app developers, showing that some developers have a habit of producing apps with low privacy ratings. Our study shows that understanding the behavior of mobile developers can be helpful to not only other app developers, but also to app markets and mobile users.

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Cited By

Steinböck MBleier JRainer MUrban TUtz CLindorfer MSpinellis DConstantinou EBacchelli A(2024)Comparing Apples to Androids: Discovery, Retrieval, and Matching of iOS and Android Apps for Cross-Platform AnalysesProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3643991.3644896(348-360)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643991.3644896
Wang LWang HWang HLi LWang Y(2023)A Deep Dive into the Featured iOS AppsProceedings of the 14th Asia-Pacific Symposium on Internetware10.1145/3609437.3609467(112-122)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3609437.3609467
Hageman KFeal ÁGamba JGirish ABleier JLindorfer MTapiador JVallina-Rodriguez N(2023)Mixed Signals: Analyzing Software Attribution Challenges in the Android EcosystemIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2023.323658249:4(2964-2979)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2023.3236582
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An Explorative Study of the Mobile App Ecosystem from App Developers' Perspective

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cover image ACM Other conferences

WWW '17: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web

April 2017

1678 pages

ISBN:9781450349130

General Chairs:
Rick Barrett
W3Events
,
Rick Cummings
Murdoch University
,
Program Chairs:
Eugene Agichtein
Emory University
,
Evgeniy Gabrilovich
Google Research

Copyright © 2017 Copyright is held by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2).

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IW3C2: International World Wide Web Conference Committee

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SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

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International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee

Republic and Canton of Geneva, Switzerland

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Published: 03 April 2017

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WWW '17: 26th International World Wide Web Conference

April 3 - 7, 2017

Perth, Australia

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WWW '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 164 of 966 submissions, 17%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,899 of 8,196 submissions, 23%

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Cited By

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643991.3644896
Wang LWang HWang HLi LWang Y(2023)A Deep Dive into the Featured iOS AppsProceedings of the 14th Asia-Pacific Symposium on Internetware10.1145/3609437.3609467(112-122)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3609437.3609467
Hageman KFeal ÁGamba JGirish ABleier JLindorfer MTapiador JVallina-Rodriguez N(2023)Mixed Signals: Analyzing Software Attribution Challenges in the Android EcosystemIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2023.323658249:4(2964-2979)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2023.3236582
Ma TZhao YLi LLiu L(2023)CiD4HMOS: A Solution to HarmonyOS Compatibility Issues2023 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE)10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00134(2006-2017)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00134
Wang LWang HLuo XZhang TWang SLiu XRoychoudhury ACadar CKim M(2022)Demystifying “removed reviews” in iOS app storeProceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3540250.3558966(1489-1499)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3540250.3558966
Wang LWang HHe RTao RMeng GLuo XLiu X(2022)MalRadarProceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems10.1145/35309066:2(1-27)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3530906
Katsamakas EPavlov O(2022)Artificial Intelligence Feedback Loops in Mobile Platform Business ModelsInternational Journal of Wireless Information Networks10.1007/s10776-022-00556-929:3(250-256)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2022
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Qayyum HSalman MSentana INguyen DIkram MTyson GKaafar M(2022)A First Look at Android Apps’ Third-Party Resources LoadingNetwork and System Security10.1007/978-3-031-23020-2_11(193-213)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2022
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Tahaei MFrik AVaniea KChiasson S(2021)Deciding on personalized adsProceedings of the Seventeenth USENIX Conference on Usable Privacy and Security10.5555/3563572.3563602(573-595)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2021
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Quevedo-Redondo RNavarro-Sierra NBerrocal-Gonzalo SGómez-García S(2021)Political Leaders in the APP EcosystemSocial Sciences10.3390/socsci1008030710:8(307)Online publication date: 13-Aug-2021
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