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Fresh apps: an empirical study of frequently-updated mobile apps in the Google play store

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Abstract

Mobile app stores provide a unique platform for developers to rapidly deploy new updates of their apps. We studied the frequency of updates of 10,713 mobile apps (the top free 400 apps at the start of 2014 in each of the 30 categories in the Google Play store). We find that a small subset of these apps (98 apps representing ˜1 % of the studied apps) are updated at a very frequent rate — more than one update per week and 14 % of the studied apps are updated on a bi-weekly basis (or more frequently). We observed that 45 % of the frequently-updated apps do not provide the users with any information about the rationale for the new updates and updates exhibit a median growth in size of 6 %. This paper provides information regarding the update strategies employed by the top mobile apps. The results of our study show that 1) developers should not shy away from updating their apps very frequently, however the frequency varies across store categories. 2) Developers do not need to be too concerned about detailing the content of new updates. It appears that users are not too concerned about such information. 3) Users highly rank frequently-updated apps instead of being annoyed about the high update frequency.

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Notes

  1. We define a free app as an app that is free-to-download.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Analysis and Intelligence Lab (SAIL), School of Computing, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Stuart McIlroy & Ahmed E. Hassan

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Nasir Ali

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  1. Stuart McIlroy
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  2. Nasir Ali
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  3. Ahmed E. Hassan
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Correspondence to Stuart McIlroy.

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Communicated by: Andreas Zeller

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McIlroy, S., Ali, N. & Hassan, A.E. Fresh apps: an empirical study of frequently-updated mobile apps in the Google play store. Empir Software Eng 21, 1346–1370 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-015-9388-2

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