Characterizing the global mobile app developers: a large-scale empirical study

The rapid growth of the mobile app ecosystem has attracted a great number of mobile app developers. However, few previous studies have analyzed app developers comprehensively at a large scale, and little is known of the characteristics of mobile app developers. In this work, we take the first step to understand global app developers from the view of mobile app life-cycle. We have created a repository of over 1.03 million Android app developers distributed at Google Play and 16 popular alternative markets, along with over 6.2 million Android apps (including apks and metadata) they created. We then explored various characteristics of these app developers from different angles including developing behaviors, releasing behaviors, app maintenance behaviors and malicious behaviors. The experimental results have revealed various interesting findings, as well as insights for future research directions. Our efforts can contribute to different stakeholders of the mobile app ecosystem.