"Same App, Different App Stores: A comparative Study" by M. Ali, M. Erfani, A. Mesbah. MobileSoft'17, Buenos Aires, Agentina, 2017.

1. Same App, Different App
Stores: A Comparative
Study
Mohamed Ali, Mona Erfani, Ali Mesbah
May 2017
1

2. 2.8 million2.2 million
2

3. Implementing the same mobile
app for different platforms has
become a common industry
practice [Joorabchi et al. ESEM’13]
3

4. “I downloaded the app so I could
place a mobile order only to find
out it’s only available through the
iPhone app.”
4

5. More than 80% of
the top-rated
apps are cross-
platform
More than 30
cross-
platform
Tools
5

6. Limited studies on Cross-
Platform Apps
6

7. Research Goal
Understand how the same
app is experienced by users
on different platforms.
7

8. Research Questions
8
RQ1 How prevalent are app-pairs? Do app-pairs exhibit
the same characteristics across app-stores?
RQ2 Why do some developers make theirs apps only
available on one platform?
RQ3 Do users perceive app-pairs equally across
platforms?
RQ4 Are the major user concerns or complaints the same
across platforms?

9. But …
9

10. No app-pair dataset!
10

11. “So far, there has been no
effort to build such a
database of cross platform
apps that researchers can
analyze” - [Nagappan et al.
SANER’16]
11

12. The Dataset
1 million 1.4 million
Used two open-source scrapers to collect iOS
and Android apps
12

13. id: com.netflix.mediaclientid: 363590051
Can’t use app ids to find pairs
Netflix
13

14. Restructure Data
Swiped
Swiped Fruits
Pimp My Rims
Pimp My Rims FreeSwiped Free
Swiped
Netflix Netflix
Beat the Boss 2
Beat the Boss 3
14

15. Restructure Data:
Clustering
Swiped
Swiped
Fruits
Pimp My Rims
Pimp My Rims FreeSwiped Free
Swiped
Netflix, Inc
Beat the Boss 2
Beat the Boss 3
IG Tech AppCore IG Tech Game Hive
Netflix
Netflix, Inc
Netflix
1. Find cluster using developer name
2. Use exact app name to find match in cluster
15

16. Finding App-pairs
Swiped
Swiped
Fruits
Pimp My Rims
Pimp My Rims FreeSwiped Free
Swiped
Netflix, Inc
Beat the Boss 2
Beat the Boss 3
IG Tech AppCore IG Tech Game Hive
Netflix
Netflix, Inc
Netflix
16

17. App-Pairs
RQ1
Prevalence &
Characteristics
RQ4
Complaints
RQ3 User
Perception
17

18. Findings RQ1
80,169
App-pairs
Top Categories
68% (Android) and
18% (iOS) apps
have Ratings &
Stars
18

19. Findings RQ1- Ratings
0
1250
2500
3750
5000
Average Ratings
4,892
1,935
iOS Android
19

20. Findings RQ1- Stars
0
1
2
3
4
Average Stars
4.04
3.8
iOS Android
20

21. Findings RQ1- Prices
Ideally, the same app should have the same
price on different platforms
88% have different
prices
Emailed all devs of
apps with price
difference > $10
• Different monetization strategies
• Different set of features
• Development/maintenance costs
21

22. RQ3 Do users perceive app-
pairs equally across
platforms?
22

23. Measuring User Perception
• Number of Downloads
• Ratings
• Stars
• Ratings & Stars Aggregated User Rating (AUR)
23

24. Different Metrics for User Perception
App Ratings Stars Rank(S) Rank(R)
Rank
(AUR)
A 100 5 1 3 2
B 2796 1.8 3 1 3
C 2173 4.8 2 2 1
24

25. 80k App-Pairs
1 ratings
14k App-Pairs
Compute
AUR
25

26. 30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
AUR
App-pairs
Thousands
ios-AUR android-AUR Poly. (android-AUR) Poly. (ios-AUR)
In 95% of the app-pairs, the Android
versions was better perceived by
users
Findings - RQ3
26

27. Snapchat
166,635 3,518,940
AUR: 50% AUR: 80%
27

28. Reasons for AUR variance
Timing (release/update) and first impressions
Support and maintenance efforts
App store support and promotional opportunities
28

29. RQ4 Are the major user
concerns or complaints the
same across platforms?
29

30. 30

31. User Reviews
Analyze user reviews of app-pairs to see if
there are any discrepancies in the way users
experience the same app on two different
platforms
80k App-Pairs
500
ratings
2k App-Pairs
1.7 M
Reviews
Scrapers
31

32. User Reviews: Analysis
1.7 M
Reviews
Feedback
Classifier
Problem Discovery
Feature Request
Non-Informative
Label 2100
Reviews
32
We use the trained classifier to classify
∼1.7M reviews of the 2K app-pairs.

33. iOS Android
6562
1418
2120
Problems Feature Non-informative
Findings RQ4 - Feedback
33

34. User Reviews: Complaints
350 K
Problematic
Reviews
Complaints
Classifier
Critical
Post Update
Price
Label 1000
Reviews
Feedback
Classifier
Problem Discovery
Feature Request
Non-Informative App Features
Other
34
We use the trained classifiers to classify
∼350k problematic reviews of the 2K app-
pairs.

35. Findings RQ4- Complaints
0
25
50
75
100
iOS Android
99
67
4
6
20
24
61
54
App Feature Critical Post Update
Price complaints Other
35

36. Snapchat
iOS Android
45
4
8 13
28
79
59
Feature Critical
Update Price
Other
“Keeps crashing Even after
updating snapchat, it's still
crashing and when I view my
contact's story it just freezes!”
“My black and white
video doesn't work. It just given
the general filters.”
36
AUR: 50% AUR: 80%

37. Summary of Findings
iOS apps receive more critical and post update
complaints while Android receive more complaints
related to app features
Android versions of cross-platform apps are better
perceived compared to iOS
80,169
App-pairs
Ratings, Prices, AUR
vary across platforms
37

38. https://github.com/saltlab/Minning-App-Stores
38

39. Thanks for your time &
attention!
Questions?
39