There’s an app for that! understanding the drivers of mobile application downloads
研究了979个新应用第一年的下载数据，发现刚发布时获得用户关注很关键，平台所有者早期影响力大，但应用成熟后影响下载量越来越难。
Since its emergence, mobile applications market has been attracting the attention of all kinds of businesses due to the lucrative opportunities apps offer and the market’s low barriers to entry. Yet, in this crowded space, only a small portion of apps can survive. Using a unique data set of 979 newly released applications, acquired from a leading mobile analytics company and enriched with publicly available data, the authors shed light on the factors associated with app downloads during an app’s first year of existence. Results from time-varying-parameter models estimated separately for free and paid apps reveal that gaining traction with users shortly after release seems critical and that app platform owners can be very influential in these early days. However, as apps mature, affecting the number of downloads becomes increasingly more difficult. The findings add new insights to the growing literature on apps and provide practical implications for their developers.