Author(s)

Kungpo Tao, Paulette Edmunds

Department of Business and Economics, Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, USA.

In this research, we examine the popularity of mobile applications across different categories by using the measures of monthly active users (MAUs) of each app. It is the authors’ intention to inspect the key characteristics of mobile apps and the relationship those characteristics have with market share and growth rate in global markets. The ease of use of mobile apps leads to a subsequent impact on the global users’ mobile behavior in daily life. Mobile apps have flooded the market, however, the acceptance and use of individual apps relies on a combination of the preference of users and the operational strategies employed by app developers. Based on secondary data collected from multiple sources including both publications and online data, the global market growth of mobile apps including China (the world’s largest market of mobile apps) has shown a correlation between apps’ market share and the users’ mobile behavior based on messaging, networking, shopping, video watching, and gaming. This research categorizes users’ mobile behavior in terms of age groups and time spent on certain mobile apps. The objective of this investigation is better understanding of the dominance of leading mobile apps and the future trend of mobile apps designed for the global market.

Mobile Apps, Monthly Active Users (MAUs), Global Markets, Messaging Apps, Social Network Apps

Tao, K. and Edmunds, P. (2018) Mobile APPs and Global Markets. Theoretical Economics Letters, 8, 1510-1524. doi: 10.4236/tel.2018.88097.