Mobile Application Diffusion and Success: An Interpretative Approach to Influential Factors

Introduction

Mobile computing is a reality in our lives; we use mobile devices to receive and answer our e-mails, locate a place, order food, and ‘like’ the status of our friends. Moreover, there is a global trend towards increasing the number of users connected to the network via mobile devices. This trend produces demand for information systems and mobile applications. Sales are increasing because of the diversity of features and capabilities offered by such devices (Barroca Filho et al., 2015).

Mobile businesses are evolving and attractive business opportunities, which have been enabled by mobile computing technology enhancement. Based on market acceptance and the importance of mobility for users, this emerging market is growing quickly. It is obvious that the phenomenal growth of these devices to access services has captured the attention of businesses to develop high value added mobile applications to respond quickly to such an increasing demand (Poushter, 2016). Thus, driven by the mobile computing scenario that is changing the way society accesses information, there is a growing demand for mobile applications (Barroca Filho et al., 2015).

A mobile application is a software application that runs on a smartphone or other portable devices. Mobile applications provide value to users by enabling them to use the internet services that were previously only available on desktop or notebook computers, but also by offering functionalities that are specific to mobile devices including GPS navigation, location-based services, and QR-code scan product searches (Song et al., 2014).

Although the market and technology are growing quickly in the field of mobile business, failures can be seen all around. It is important to know which important factors play an essential role regarding the success of mobile applications. In this way, active companies in mobile business can strategically allocate their limited resources in the most important factors and make appropriate strategies to improve the content and quality of their mobile services (Shieh et al., 2014). A great deal of research has been made to understand the factors that determine mobile app acceptance by users and their significance. However, most of the previous research in this area has focused on the general factors related to the adoption of mobile services (Shieh et al., 2014). The goal of the mentioned studies was mainly to extract factors that could determine user acceptance toward a specific application. Some of them have been implemented in a specific society and some others are concentrated on special applications such as mobile banking. In the present research, we attempt to design a generic model that comprehensively demonstrates important factors that could contribute toward mobile application diffusion and success. The novelty of mobile application development (started from 2009) as well as the necessity for basic knowledge in this field may help us to define research aims to present the factors that should be considered when designing and introducing a mobile app to the market.