Wed 7 Nov 2018 11:37 - 12:00 at Horizons 10-11 - Mobile Apps Chair(s): Shane McIntosh

When a user looks for an Android app in Google Play Store, a number of apps appear in a specific rank. Mobile apps with higher ranks are more likely to be noticed and downloaded by users. The goal of this work is to understand the evolution of ranks and identify the variables that share a strong relationship with ranks. We explore $900$ apps with a total of $4,878,011$ user-reviews in $30$ app development areas. We discover $13$ clusters of rank trends. We observe that the majority of the subject apps (i.e., $61%$) dropped in the rankings over the two years of our study. By applying a regression model, we find the variables that statistically significantly explain the rank trends, such as the number of releases. Moreover, we build a mixed effects model to study the changes in ranks across apps and various versions of each app. We find that not all the variables that common-wisdom would deem important have a significant relationship with ranks. Furthermore, app developers should not be afraid of a late entry into the market as new apps can achieve higher ranks than existing apps. Finally, we present the findings to $51$ developers. According to the feedback, the findings can help app developers to achieve better ranks in Google Play Store.

Wed 7 Nov

Displayed time zone: Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey change

10:30 - 12:00
Mobile AppsResearch Papers / Journal-First at Horizons 10-11
Chair(s): Shane McIntosh McGill University
10:30
22m
Talk
Getting the Most from Map Data Structures in Android
Journal-First
Rubén Saborido Infantes Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Rodrigo Morales Concordia University, Foutse Khomh Polytechnique Montréal, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc Concordia University and Polytechnique Montréal, Giuliano Antoniol Polytechnique Montréal
DOI
10:52
22m
Talk
Successes, Challenges, and Rethinking – An Industrial Investigation on Crowdsourced Mobile Application Testing
Journal-First
Ruizhi Gao , Yabin Wang , Yang Feng University of California, Irvine, Zhenyu Chen Nanjing University, W. Eric Wong
DOI
11:15
22m
Talk
AppFlow: Using Machine Learning to Synthesize Robust, Reusable UI Tests
Research Papers
Gang Hu Columbia University, USA, Linjie Zhu , Junfeng Yang Columbia University
11:37
22m
Talk
Winning the App Production Rally
Research Papers
Ehsan Noei University of Toronto, Daniel Alencar Da Costa Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Ying Zou Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario