Under pressure (ee da de da de) !!
The mobile ecosystem is the combination of platforms, devices, apps, users, companies, online markets, services, and any actor that produces/consumes products and services derived from mobile devices and apps. As you have read, despite the existence of only two dominant platforms in the market (Android, iOS) there are multiple programming languages and frameworks for developing apps; there is also a plethora of devices and operating systems out there that directly impact the quality of mobile apps. There is a "mobile revolution" going on with millions of apps that can be downloaded directly to mobile devices for free (or paying small fees). Therefore, this combination of actors, software, hardware and technology are revolutionizing the way how people interact and make businesses.
But what is the deal with the "under pressure" title?... In 1981 the British rock band "Queen" released the famous "Under pressure" song with the help of David Bowie. This section has nothing to do with the song. We just wanted to use a cool title for the section.
No..wait a second; this section has a lot to do with the title. Mobile developers are continuously "under pressure" because of the changing dynamics of the mobile ecosystem. Search for the number of apps available in the Google play and the Apple App store markets. You will find that millions of apps are available there, which means that it is highly probable your "killer app idea" is already out there. Because mobile online markets democratizes the access to mobile apps, millions of users can browse and download any app anywhere. Therefore, you have to do a pretty god job if you wanna be the creator of the new whatsapp, tik-tok, instragram, or tinder apps.
A second root of the "pressure" is the quality demanded by users. Mobile app users are becoming more specialized and "professional", continuously asking for better and innovative features. Mobile markets have empowered users in the sense they can select the app they want and they can publicly reward (or punish) app makers with ratings and reviews that can be posted online.
A third component here is the change-proneness in the APIs and the devices fragmentation, in particular for Android. 30 different versions of the Android APIs have been released from 2008, it means that on average 2 versions are released each year. Each new version of the APIs include thousands of changes, and some of the changes can break your app as demonstrated by previous . Concerning the fragmentation, new hardware components and sensors in the devices pushes the need in the users for apps that take advantage of the new technologies.
Mobile app development is a continuous evolution and maintenance cycle, in which developers publish apps in the markets, wait for thousands/millions of user reviews, then incorporate the feature requests in the apps (or fix the bugs), and then publish the app again as soon as possible. The release speed is a key factor here, because the longer an app has an issue, the larger can be the number of bad reviews and ratings posted by users. Therefore, mobile app developers are continuously "under pressure... ee da de da de".
G. Bavota, M. Linares-Vásquez, C. E. Bernal-Cárdenas, M. D. Penta, R. Oliveto and D. Poshyvanyk, "The Impact of API Change- and Fault-Proneness on the User Ratings of Android Apps," in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 384-407, April 1 2015. doi: 10.1109/TSE.2014.2367027
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