Evaluating the impact of technical and other characteristics of mobile applications on their performance

Marija Vavpotič (2016) Evaluating the impact of technical and other characteristics of mobile applications on their performance. MSc thesis.

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Abstract

In recent years the number of mobile applications has increased considerably. For instance the number of applications in the largest app store for AndroidTM mobile operating system - Google Play has exceeded two millions. As the visibility of individual applications is low it is not surprising that the majority of applications have only a very small number of downloads or users. One of the important factors in attracting new users is application’s visibility on the charts of the most popular applications (top charts). Therefore, one of the objectives of the application developers it to position their applications on the top charts. The main goal of the master thesis was to determine what technical (size and permissions) and other (user ratings, number of ratings, the number of days since the last update, number of screenshots ...) characteristics of the applications have a significant impact on their performance. Performance is determined by using the three criteria: the position of application on the top charts, the number of the application downloads and user ratings of the application. To achieve this goal we captured and analysed data of the most popular apps on Google Play in the three main types (Applications, Games and Family). We studied these categories in further detail considering whether the applications are free, paid, new free and new paid. All together we got 12 different groups of applications that we name genres. United states top charts were selected for the study as they represent the largest and most interesting market. The data was collected by using web scrapper. Statistical tests were performed on the collected data separately for each genre to determine the impact of technical and other characteristics of the applications on their performance. The results showed both similarities and differences between genres. While some characteristics are specific only for certain genres, others are valid for all or most genres. For instance, larger size of applications in contrast to assertions of many developer web pages did not prove to be a very negative feature. Applications that have been updated recently and are not new, are generally higher on the charts and have higher user ratings than others. Applications with a large number of user ratings are also higher on the chart, have larger number of downloads and in most genres a higher user ratings. Most apps that are higher on the chart and have a higher number of downloads use more permissions. Consequentially this means that they also offer more functionality. Despite the fact Google recommends limiting the number of permissions this does not seem to be a decisive factor especially in comparison to the number of supported functionalities.

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