revisiting prior empirical findings for mobile apps an empirical case study on the 15 most popular...
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Revisiting Prior Empirical Findings For Mobile Apps:
An Empirical Case Study on the 15 Most Popular Open‐Source Android Apps
Mark D. Syer, Meiyappan Nagappan, Ahmed E. Hassan and Bram Adams
The Number of Apps is Rapidly Increasing
0
200
400
600
800
1000
January 2013 April 2013 July 2013 October 2013
Num
ber o
f App
s (‘000
s)
2
873,627
The Mobile Ecosystem has Millions of Stakeholders
900M Users150,000 Developers
600M Users235,000 Developers
3
Where is the research?
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402 studies published at major software engineering conferences
between 2011 ‐ 2012
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JHotDraw
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15 Mobile Apps2 Frequently‐studied
Desktop/Server Applications 3 Unix Utilities
How do the defect‐fix times compare?
How does the sizecompare?
We selected popular, open‐source and nontrivial apps
Mobile apps are much smaller than frequently‐studied desktop/server applications
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Line
s of Cod
e (KLO
C)0
5010
015
020
025
0
Mobile Apps
Frequently‐studiedDesktop/Server Applications
Unix Utilities
Mobile app development teams are much smaller than frequently‐studied desktop/server applications
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Num
ber o
f Develop
ers
Mobile Apps
Frequently‐studiedDesktop/Server Applications
Unix Utilities
05
1015
2025
Unix Utilities
Mobile Apps
Num
ber o
f Core De
velope
rs
Frequently‐studiedDesktop/Server Applications
#developers responsible for 80% of the commits
Not all functionality is contained within the mobile app’s code base
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App‐Specific Code Third Party Codefoo
bar
main
Platform DependenciesJAVA Dependencies
Unique DependenciesThird Party
Dependencies
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Mobile apps tend to rely heavily on the underlying mobile platform
Platform dependenciesAll dependencies
Platform
Dep
ende
ncy Ra
tio
Number of Source Code Files
How do the defect‐fix times compare?
How does the sizecompare?
How does the sizecompare?
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Mobile apps are much smaller than frequently‐studied desktop/server applications
Mobile apps are much smaller than frequently‐studied desktop/server applications
Most mobile app defects are fixed within one year
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Mobile apps tend to fix defects quicker than desktop/server applications or unix utilities
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60%
33%
Defects in mobile apps are highly concentrated in a few files
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Decreasing defect concentration
How does the sizecompare?
How do the defect‐fix times compare?
How does the sizecompare?
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Mobile apps tend to fix defects quicker than frequently‐studied
desktop/server appli‐cations or unix utilities
Mobile apps are much smaller than frequently‐studied desktop/server applications
Mobile apps are much smaller than frequently‐studied desktop/server applications
App developers should be careful when using existing software
engineering knowledge
Researchers must consider mobile apps in
their research
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