Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO): A Systematic Mapping Study

The development of mobile applications around a central software platform has been impacting the software industry. Software solutions are collaboratively built within a dynamic market, often requiring adaptation of software development processes. This trend has been broadly studied as Software Ecosystem (SECO) - in the mobile platform domain, named as Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO). In this paper, we share the results of a systematic mapping study on the MSECO field that analyzed 28 papers identified as relevant to answer our research questions. The results indicate the growing interest in this research field as well as the main software platforms and trending topics. We confirmed the three main MSECOs as Android (Google), iOS (Apple) and Windows Phone (Microsoft). We observed the more investigated area is mobile app development. Finally, we highlighted the main benefits: the attracting and supporting developers, then helping developers to learn and create content and the app store that allows selling and buying processes.