In mobile app ecosystems, an app can behave like a virus. Once downloaded, it may cause its user to recommend that app to friends who then may download the app and “infect” other friends. Epidemics occur when a small number of downloads causes a snowballing effect that results in a massive number of downloads (and consequently, a rich developer). This paper presents AppEco, the first Artificial...

Objective To review and assess the current selection of sleep analysis smartphone applications (apps) available for download. Methods The iOS and Google Play mobile app store were searched for sleep analysis apps targeted for consumer use. Alarm clock, sleep-aid, snoring and sleep-talking recorder, fitness tracker apps, and apps geared towards health professionals were excluded. App informati...

We present SPADE, a system for quickly and automatically analyzing runtime states of a large collection of mobile apps. Such tasks are becoming increasingly important for app stores: e.g., for checking apps’ runtime security and privacy properties, for capturing and indexing data inside apps for better app search, etc. SPADE uses two key techniques. First, it uses binary instrumentation to auto...

With an abundance of products available online, many online retailers provide sales rankings to make it easier for consumers to find the best-selling products. Successfully implementing product rankings online was done a decade ago by Amazon, and more recently by Apple’s App Store. However, neither market provides actual download data, a very useful statistic for both practitioners and research...

The growth of the smart devices market and the development of mobile applications (Apps) for them have given rise to an App economy. Sales of mobile applications are a key revenue source in this economy, with the expected worldwide market growth of US $75 billion by 2017. Despite the trend, many mobile Apps fail to attract customers, yet there has been a lack of research and understanding of th...

Along with the growth of the smartphone market, the furnishing of diverse and plentiful mobile Apps is surfacing as the key competitiveness of smartphones. The mobile App market has been appraised as a competitive new market carrying huge potential. Although many users download and use paid and free Apps from App Store and App Market, relevant research regarding consumer app buying is virtually...

There are over 1.2 million applications on the Google Play store today with a large number of competing applications for any given use or function. This creates challenges for users in selecting the right application. Moreover, some of the applications being of dubious origin, there are no mechanisms for users to understand who the applications are talking to, and to what extent. In our work, w...

Smartphone users increasingly download and install third-party applications from official application repositories. Attackers may use this centralized application delivery architecture as a security and privacy attack vector. This risk increases since application vetting mechanisms are often not in place and the user is delegated to authorize which functionality and protected resources are acce...