Status Quo and Best Practices of App Development in Regional Companies

摘要

Only a few years after their advent, smartphones and tablets are now used routinely by many people. While this has been bolstered by the fast innovation cycles of the hardware, mobile devices become versatile due to the applications developed for them. These apps are increasingly used for business purposes. In a research project we investigated whether apps are interesting for all businesses, how and for which activities they plan to use apps, and what kinds of challenges and problems they perceive. To this end, we conducted an interview-based survey with regional companies. Thoroughly analyzing the transcripts enabled us to draw conclusions on the status quo of apps. In this article we present the results from the project, including a set of early best practices. We also discuss our findings to derive directions for future research.