Similar to love, competition can often be unrequited. This study explores the asymmetric pattern of competition driven by membership overlap in two-sided mobile social apps (MSAs) markets. Building on the niche-width dynamics framework, we theorize and validate the relative prevalence and survival capabilities of messaging apps and SNS apps, especially when membership overlap fosters current or...

Rising ownership of smartphones and tablets across social and demographic groups has made mobile applications, or apps, a potentially promising tool for engaging patients in their health care, particularly those with high health care needs. Through a systematic search of iOS (Apple) and Android app stores and an analysis of apps targeting individuals with chronic illnesses, we assessed the degr...

1 MOTIVATION A June 2011 report1 showed that on average, a U.S. smartphone user spent 9% more time using apps (on smartphone) than browsing the Internet (on PC or smartphone). This growth in app usage is fueled by an increasingly large number of diverse and useful mobile apps: there are more than a million mobile apps available today in major app markets and around 15,000 apps are released per ...

BACKGROUND There is growing evidence for the positive impact of mindfulness on wellbeing. Mindfulness-based mobile apps may have potential as an alternative delivery medium for training. While there are hundreds of such apps, there is little information on their quality. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to conduct a systematic review of mindfulness-based iPhone mobile apps and to evaluate their qua...

W idespread mobile device use has stimulated a rich market for applications. Many apps, however, reveal sensitive user information such as location, movements, and habits1 and/or spread malware.2 Network anonymization techniques alone don’t ensure privacy because the OS together with the invoked mobile apps might still release information that reidentifies users or devices. Even when users are ...

BACKGROUND Mobile phone screens can facilitate stimulation to various components of the visual system and many mobile apps are accepted as a means of providing clinical assessments for the oculo-visual system. Although many of these apps are intended for use in clinical settings, there is a growing number of apps in eye care developed for self-tests and eye exercises for lay people. These and o...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular diseases are the deadliest diseases worldwide, with 17.3 million deaths in 2008 alone. Among them, heart-related deaths are of the utmost relevance; a fact easily proven by the 7.25 million deaths caused by ischemic heart disease alone in that year. The latest advances in smartphones and mHealth have been used in the creation of thousands of medical apps related to car...

People have a love/hate relationship with rapidly changing healthcare technology. While consumer demand for medical apps continues to grow as rapidly as does supply (there are over 100,000 health, wellness and medical applications, or ‘apps’ on the market), healthcare professionals and safety experts worry about the impact of these apps on the health consumer. In response to the rapidly growing...

Last decade has witnessed a tremendous expansion of mobile devices, which brought an unprecedented opportunity to reach a large number of mobile users at any point in time. This resulted in a surge of interest of mobile operators and ad publishers to understand usage patterns of mobile apps and allow more relevant content recommendations. Due to a large input space, a critical step in understan...

The field of Mobile health (mHealth), which includes mobile phone applications (apps), is growing rapidly and has the potential to transform healthcare by increasing its quality and efficiency. The present paper focuses particularly on mobile technology for body weight management, including mobile phone apps for weight loss and the available evidence on their effectiveness. Translation of behav...