Guest Editorial: Special issue on software engineering for mobile applications

• Main Authors: PANICHELLA, Sebastiano, PALOMBA, Fabio, LO, David, NAGAPPAN, Meiyappan
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4888; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5891/viewcontent/Panichella2019_Article_GuestEditorial_pv_oa.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

As Andreessen stated “software is eating the world” (Andreessen 2011). Most of todays industries, from engineering, manufacturing, logistics to health, are run on enterprise software applications and can efficiently automate the analysis and manipulation of several, heterogeneous types of data. One of the most prominent examples of such software diffusion is represented by the widespread adoption of mobile applications. Indeed, during the recent years, the Global App Economy experienced unprecedented growth, driven by the increasing usage of apps and by the greater adoption of mobile devices (e.g., smartphone) around the globe. This mobile application market, which is expected in few years to double in size to $101 billion (Annie 2016), represents an attractive opportunity for software developers interested to build high quality and successful software applications. In such a competitive market, both “software quality” (Scherr et al. n.d.; Catolino 2018; Noei et al. 2017; Grano et al. 2017; Xia et al. n.d.; Syer et al. 2015) and overall “user experience and satisfaction” (Panichella et al. 2015; Di Sorbo et al. 2016; Grano et al. 2018) play a paramount role in the success of applications (Annie 2016; Tian et al. 2015). Thus, mobile developers interested in maximizing apps’ revenue need to efficiently monitor and understand user experience and (perceived) software quality of their mobile applications, this with the help of appropriate tools and datasets (Grano et al. 2017; Panichella et al. 2015; Panichella n.d.).