Measuring the relationship between social media and mobile applications

1. Social Media and
Measurement of Mobile Applications
BY: BRENDAN BROWN

2. Purpose
Research the history of mobile applications
Research the sales revenue of mobile apps
Identify the top leading apps
Identify the correlation between social media and mobile apps

3. RQ 1- What is the history behind mobile apps?
Mobile applications are defined as software applications developed specifically for use on
small, wireless computing devices, such as smartphones and tablets, rather than desktop
or laptop computers.
Mobile apps date back to the 20th century. They started out as games, ring tone editors,
calculators, and calendars.

4. Early Apps

5. History of Mobile Applications
As cell phone technology began to advance, so did the apps. After the
development of smartphones and tablets, the development and variety of
apps began to increase.
Some of the operating systems for smartphones, like Mac iOS, Android,
Windows Mobile, Symbian, and RIM, have worked with and developed third-party
software, beyond the typical software that cell phone suppliers carry.

7. RQ 2- How much have apps grossed?
As of June 2014, Apple has sold over 70 billion apps since the creation of
their app store and $4.6 billion worth of apps as well.
All Mac iOS devices account for 13% of the world’s smartphone users and
the remaining 87% are Android users.
As of June 2014, both direct and indirect sales for mobile applications, in
total, have grossed roughly about $25 billion.

8. Mobile Application Revenue
The Google App Store has the largest selection of apps, with about 1.3
million readily available for their users.
Apple is in second place will about 1.2 million.
Rounding out the top five is Windows Phone Store (300,000), Amazon
Appstore (240,000), and Blackberry World (130,000).

9. Mobile App Revenue (cont.)
Other popular mobile apps are: YouTube, Pandora Radio, Google Maps, and
Yahoo Stocks

10. Mobile Analytics
Organizations and businesses create apps for a number of reasons.
For example, American Eagle Outfitters created a mobile app with the intent
to display their clothing line and increase customer engagement through its
digital channel.

12. RQ 3- What does developers measure?
When developing mobile apps, developers take into consideration app
metrics like the number of unique users, number of active users, visitor
traffic, abandonment, social referrals, custom variables and more.
It should also capture performance-related metrics such as number of
crashes, load time at launch, load time per view and the number of times
deleted.

13. Social Media and the Apps
Create consistency!
Being consistent in the way an organization or business measures its
analytics will provide a solid baseline for future analyses and will provide
excellent context as the organization or business grows its digital facet.
Also, app developers want to help create brand consistency as well as
interlinking between different social mediums.

15. References
Bhatia, N. (2014, May 12). Using Analytics to Measure Mobile App Success. Retrieved November 7, 2014.
Clark, J. (2014, January 1). History of Mobile Applications: Theory and Practice of Mobile Applications.
Retrieved November 7, 2014, from http://www.uky.edu/~jclark/mas490apps/History of Mobile Apps.pdf
Number of apps available in leading app stores 2014 | Statistic. (2014, July 1). Retrieved November 8, 2014,
from http://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/
Petronzio, M. (2014, April 3). The 10 Most Popular Smartphone Apps in the U.S. [CHART]. Retrieved
November 7, 2014, from http://mashable.com/2014/04/03/popular-apps-chart/
Smith, D. (2014, July 23). APPLE'S SECRET WEAPON: App Store Sales. Retrieved November 7, 2014.
Rouse, M., & Wigmore, I. (2013, December 1). Mobile app. Retrieved November 7, 2014.