Comparative analysis of mobile application stores in different charging modes

This paper describes the platformisation of the mobile services domain, which in recent years has become a successful strategy for some hardware manufacturers and software companies. While having different platform strategies and business models, they have succeeded in creating a demand for mobile software and content with end-users. This paper proposes a way to determine the optimum platform-charging mode that an operator should adopt to play a meaningful role in the mobile service domain and with respect to content with end-users. Four charging modes employed by mobile application stores are studied in this paper, namely the one-sided paid-by-users charging mode, the one-sided paid-by-advertisers charging mode, the two-sided differential paid charging mode and the two-sided paid and free access charging mode. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the four modes is also presented.