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The Openness of Smartphone Software Platforms –
A Framework and Preliminary Empirical Findings from
the Developers’ Perspective
Daniel Hilkert, Alexander Benlian, Thomas Hess
Institute for Information Systems and New Media
Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
Ludwigstrasse 28
80539 Munich
hilkert@bwl.lmu.de
benlian@bwl.lmu.de
thess@bwl.lmu.de
Abstract: Application developers are of growing importance to ensure that
smartphone software platforms gain or maintain a competitive edge. However,
despite the increasing research interest in platform openness, previous research
attempts have neglected to investigate the perspective of third-party developers.
This paper contributes to a more sophisticated understanding of the third-party
developers‟ individual perception of platform openness by identifying concrete
facets of openness and evaluating their impact on the developers‟ work. For this
purpose, a comprehensive qualitative investigation and a quantitative survey were
undertaken. Based on our findings, we discuss practical implications regarding the
management of third-party developers in smartphone platform ecosystems.
1 Introduction
The growing dynamics of software platform ecosystems has become particularly striking
in the smartphone sector. Despite smartphone sales‟ overall growth of 72% in 2010, the
previously dominant Symbian platform‟s market share eroded significantly due to the
emergence of a new generation of software platforms like Android OS and iOS [Ga10].
However, these new platforms‟ overwhelming success cannot only be attributed to the
hardware‟s superior quality or its built-in features, but should rather be attributed to the
software platforms‟ attractiveness. By establishing open software platforms that allow
third-party developers to create applications and distribute them over the platforms‟
built-in marketplaces, Google and Apple both managed to create prospering ecosystems
around their smartphone operating systems. Consequently, Apple‟s iOS App Store and
Google‟s Android Marketplace already had 350,000 apps (iOS) and 280,000 apps
(Android) available at the beginning of 2011, while, with only 50,000 available
applications, Symbian‟s OVI Store fell far short [An11, Ap11, Di11].
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These statistics illustrate that the availability of a comprehensive set of “apps”, or more
generally speaking complementary software applications, has become one of the key
success factor for smartphone software platforms. However, the management of the
platform ecosystem, which is composed of the platform provider, third-party developers,
and end-users, is a difficult task due to the involved indirect network effects: On the one
side, a software-based platform product‟s attractiveness for end-users is strongly
correlated to the availability of complementary applications. On the other side, third-
party developers (whom we refer to as complementors) are only willing to produce
complementary applications if a platform provides an adequate potential for expected
revenues1 [CG93, RT03].
The difficulty of managing complementors and finding the right degree of openness was
also emphasized by Tiwana et al (2010), who note that “governing platforms requires a
delicate balance of control by a platform owner and autonomy among independent
developers” (p. 676 f.) and, hence, suggest examining the “formal and informal
mechanisms implemented by a platform owner to encourage desirable behaviors by
module developers” (p. 680) [TKB10]. Most appropriately, such examinations should
include the perspective of platform providers as well as the developers‟ perception of
these mechanisms. However, previous contributions on the openness of platforms (see
next section for a review) have focused on the providers‟ perspective and neglected to
investigate the developers‟ perspective, so far.
Given these calls for research and the research gap identified above, this paper aims to
contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the complementors‟ individual
perception of platform openness. Hence, our research questions are:
(1) What is platform openness from the perspective of third party developers?
(2) Which facets of platform openness constrain or advance the work of developers?
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: The next section develops the
theoretical basis of this work drawing on literature on openness in general and vertical
platform openness in particular. We then describe the methodology and results of our
two-step approach including qualitative and quantitative research methods. In the
concluding section, the paper points out implications and discusses limitations together
with starting points for future research.
2 Theoretical Foundation & Background
1 Complementor‟s revenues can result from a multitude of monetization options, like selling applications,
advertising, contract development, to name the most important options.
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The term platform has been used to describe a multitude of differing concepts, such as
supply chain platforms (e.g. in the automotive industry) or internal product platforms
(e.g. in the context of modularization and customization) [Ga09]. However, our idea of
smartphone software platforms grounds on the concept of multi-sided industry platforms
which are defined as “products, services or technologies […] that serve as foundations
upon which other firms can build complementary products, services or technologies” (p.
54) and that “facilitate transactions between different sides of the markets” (p. 57 f.)
[Ga09]. Accordingly, smartphones together with its operating systems (e.g. Android) and
the associated distribution channels (e.g. Android Marketplace) form the foundation of
the smartphone platform ecosystems with platform providers, third-party app developers
and end-users as participants.
2.1 Related Work on Platform Openness
Eisenmann et al. (2009) define that a software-based platform should be considered open
if the contribution, the development, the usage, and the commercialization is not
restricted, or if all existing restrictions are reasonable and equally applied to all
participants [EPV09]. Based on this definition, two distinct ways of opening a platform
can be distinguished [Bo10]: On the one hand, opening a platform horizontally means
giving up some control by licensing the platform to competitors, or integrating further
platform sponsors. On the other hand, granting external developers access to the market
of complementary applications is regarded as vertically opening a platform. However,
since our research interest focuses on openness as a way to manage complementary
contributions, we limit the following review of related work to vertical platform
openness2.
The problem of finding the right degree of vertical platform openness arises from a
fundamental trade-off known as “diversity vs. control” [Bo10]. When a platform is
inherently dependent on a continuous supply of complementary innovations, such as the
previously mentioned new generations of smartphone operating systems, opening a
platform vertically to external developers potentially increases the complementary
innovations‟ diversity [Ch03, Hi05]. However, opening a platform vertically and the
resultant loss of control could pose problems for a platform provider. First, the
orchestration and coordination of resources become more complex, simply because more
players and interests are involved [AC10, Gr96]. Second, by delegating the production
of complements to external developers, the platform provider also loses his control over
the complementary platform features‟ agenda and, as a result, also over possible fields of
application for the platform.
2 For contributions on horizontal platform-openness, see e.g. [CMR92, SV98] or [Fa07].
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Besides contributions on platform openness‟s regulatory implications [EK06] and
contributions on openness in platforms‟ technological architecture (e.g. [SSF10], or
[AJ10]), contributions from the strand of literature on platform strategies have
specifically focused on questions of vertical platform openness. Building on findings
regarding general technology strategy, Cusumano and Gawer (2002) identified facets of
vertical openness (although they not yet call them such) as part of their platform
leadership levers [CG02]. West (2003) thereafter introduced the platform openness
concept as a continuous degree, contrary to the idea of openness as either completely
closed or open [We03]. Later, platform openness was considered an instrument to steer
external innovation [BL09, Bo10, EPV09, PV09] and the resulting competitive
advantages [EK06]. However, despite this constantly increasing research interest, to our
knowledge there are as yet no investigations from the perspective of developers.
2.2 The Concept of Perceived Platform Openness (PPO)
Due to the lack of existing findings on the complementors‟ perception of platform
openness, we define PPO as follows:
Perceived platform openness (PPO) is a platform’s degree of openness
as perceived by its complementary application developers.
However, recognizing that openness is a rather abstract term, we intend to cope with the
PPO‟s high overall complexity by indentifying sub dimensions of PPO [AJ10].
Consistent with the dual character of the above presented definition of multi-sided
industry platforms, the “technical architecture and organizing principles of these
platforms jointly determine their evolutionary trajectories” (p. 676) [TKB10]. This
distinction can be transferred to the complementor perspective on smartphone platforms:
On the one hand, third-party developers interact with the technical platform and, on the
other hand, with the platform‟s marketplace as the major distribution channel for
complementary applications [SSF10]. Here, the technical platform refers to all facets of
the platform related to the technical development of a third-party application which
includes, for example, APIs and SDKs, as well as all kinds of conditions and
communications (like documentations, blogs and forums) related to the technical
development. The platform‟s distribution channel (or marketplace) refers to all facets of
application distribution. Besides the design of the marketplace, this sub dimension
includes the terms and conditions of participating as well as related communications.
3 Facets of Smartphone Platform Openness
Building upon the theoretical considerations given above, we intend to derive a deeper
understanding of the third-party developers‟ perception of openness. For this purpose,
we used a two-step approach: First, a comprehensive set of concrete facets of openness
was identified by means of an exploratory qualitative investigation. Second, a
preliminary quantitative analysis was performed to evaluate the relative importance of
the identified openness facets.
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3.1 Step 1: Qualitative Identification
Methodological Approach
Recognizing that no preliminary research on the developers‟ perception of platform
openness was available, an inductive approach by means of an exploratory investigation
with third-party developers and experts on smartphone software platforms was
undertaken (see table 1 for an overview). This approach is especially well-suited for
emergent or poorly understood phenomena providing the broadest possible contextual
information for assessment and understanding. Thus, for our study, developers of
complementary applications for the Android and iOS smartphone platforms were
interviewed.
Method
Participants
N
Activities/Roles
Results
Exploratory
Interviews
iOS and Android
app developers
9
Open-ended exploratory interviews;
Investigation of the complementors
general perception of openness and
identification of concrete openness-
related facets
"Saturated" list of
21 openness-
related facets
Card-Sorting
Procedure
iOS and Android
app developers
6
Assessment of content validity;
evaluation of the assignment of the
aspects to the two dimensions of PPO
Confirmation of
facet classification
Focus group
discussion
Experts on
mobile software
and researchers
7
Assessment of content validity;
screening out of overlapping facets
Removal of in total
5 facets
Table 1: Methodological Approach and Roles of Research Participants in Step 1
Based on the recommendations by Gläser and Laudel (2006), an interview guideline was
developed. However, since we were interested in covering the full extent of the
developers‟ perception of openness, we decided to deploy open interviews which should
motivate the developers to freely describe their association with the term “platform-
openness” and subsequently name concrete facets or restrictions of openness they were
aware of [GL06].
The criteria to select our interview partners were led by the intention to derive
completeness in terms of developers‟ openness perceptions. For this purpose, we
selected developers that cover a preferably high fraction of the diversity of all developer
types of the target platforms with regard to nationalities, success scores (in terms of
rankings) and genres. Furthermore, our sample of interview partners included multi-
homers, which allowed us to cover the perspective of developers that are familiar with
multiple platforms and could compare the different platform ecosystems. Besides the
condition to cover the diversity of developer types, the size of our developer sample was
determined by a predefined stop criterion: The interview procedure was repeated until
three successive interviews did not reveal any new openness facets, which allowed us to
assume information saturation. As a result, a total number of nine third-party application
developers were interviewed. The respondents were either software company employees,
freelancer, had founded their own companies or described themselves as “interested
amateurs”. However, all respondents confirmed to be key informants regarding the
development and distribution of smartphone applications of their organisation.
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After transcribing the interviews, an inductive content analytic approach based on the
recommendations by Krippendorf (2004) was performed [Kr04]. During this process, the
developers‟ statements were recursively consolidated, resulting in a list of 11 technical
facets of openness and eight facets concerning the distribution channel‟s openness. The
assignment of openness facets to either the technical platform or the distribution channel
dimension was evaluated by means of a card-sorting procedure with another set of six
third-party developers [AG91, Ke86]3. Since all six participants largely reproduced our
assignments (hit-ratio = 89%4), our classification was confirmed. During this procedure,
we also noticed that none of the facets proofed difficult to assign to one of the two
theoretically derived PPO dimensions, although the facets resulted from open questions
without mentioning the existence of the two sub dimensions. Accordingly, we assume
that our two-dimensional concept of PPO does sufficiently cover the diversity of
developers‟ openness perceptions.
Thereafter, the content validity of these facets was assessed by means of a focus group.
Seven experts including three application developers with more than four years of
experience in mobile application development5 and four IS researchers with special
expertise on mobile software platforms were invited to discuss the initial set of openness
facets. As a result, a total number of three facets were excluded because the members of
the focus group jointly agreed that these facets were already sufficiently covered by a
superordinate facet. The resulting final framework of in total 16 key facets of openness
is described in detail in the next section.
Results
Regarding technical platform openness, the first facet we identified from our qualitative
interviews was that developers seem to have the need for advice and counsel regarding
their work in form of exchange among complementors. Therefore it is an important facet
of a platform„s openness to facilitate this sort of exchange. A developer from
CasaLive.de said: “In case of more openness the web community of Apple would be
larger. This would result in advantages concerning a better exchange of information and
faster responses to questions or problems, which is the case e.g. for Android“.
Developers further reported the need for the provision of a useful technical
documentation to help them with their development issues. However, especially the
creation of non-standard applications which involve making use of the platform in an
extraordinary way can result in more complicated problems that go beyond the scope of
the documentation. Since those issues can only be solved efficiently by responsible from
the platform, the facet of technical support by the provider was found to be an important
issue of openness as well. The Android developer from openintents.com commented on
this: “There is this technical blog, where they answer up-to-date questions. Moreover
there is a good customer support and support for developers. There are mailing lists and
office hours during which you can chat. Altogether I find that quite satisfactory“.
3 The participants were given a set of cards with one of the identified facets and a brief description. The
participants were then asked to assign each of the cards either to one of the two sub dimensions or to an
“ambiguous” category. During the task, the developers were asked to think aloud and explain each of the card
assignments.
4 The hit ratio calculates the ratio of correct item assignments to the total number of assignments.
5 The group of focus group participants was distinct from our interview sample.
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Another facet that was reported is the extent of effort it requires to contribute to a certain
platform. Developers are concerned with the complexity of the specific programming
languages as well as with the complexity of the platform itself, generally speaking with
the learnability of technical standards. Our interview partner from halcyonestudios.com
said: “When I hear platform openness in general I think of ease of accessibility;
generally speaking an easy to obtain and easy to access platform, thinking more from
the coding or API side of things“. Since the majority of developers welcomed every aid
with the programming of their applications, development tools like SDKs or test-
environments constitute a basic component of the expected support from the provider
side. Hence we attributed the availability of development tools to the perceived openness
of a platform. In order to reduce the development costs most developers would prefer
platforms that are based on languages that are either common standard or at least closely
related to those standards. This enables them to port their applications to other platforms
and further facilitates data exchange. Based on those observations, we identified the
technical interoperability of a platform with other systems or platforms as an important
facet of the platform‟s perceived openness. A related facet is the functional range of a
platform. This aspect showed to be relevant, because it creates the potential for
differentiation, as innovative ideas often draw upon the exploitation of every functional
feature a platform has to offer. The last technical facet concerns the technical
performance and proofed to be a major issue among developers. If the platform's
technical performance cannot keep up with the technological standard of the market or
the state of the art development tools, developers feel restricted in their work process,
because they have to adapt to the lower performance of the platform.
Concerning the distribution channel, developers reported that transparent terms and
conditions, for instance the fees developers are obliged to pay to the platform provider
for selling applications via his distribution channel, are an essential aspect of strategic
planning and innovative thinking. On the other hand restrictive terms and conditions
were reported to hinder such intensions considerably. Furthermore, application
developers stated that they had to adapt their expectations and their strategic planning to
the rules of a platform beforehand. Therefore, we inferred that they are inherently
dependent on information issued by the platform provider. Hence, application developers
rely on the platform‟s transparency of rules on content. A developer from Readdle.com
said: “Openness is about having clear information about rules and principles of doing
products for a platform“. Thus it is a natural outcome that they value platforms that do
not employ restrictive rules on content. Our interview partner from halcyonestudios.com
said: “In terms of straight-up censorship it (openness) is very important. I feel that
Google’s policy of being generally open and trusting that people are doing the right
thing and only acting if that proves otherwise looks good on them as a company.“
Another important facet for developers was being able to comprehend the ways a market
functions. The rise and fall of applications, the impact of marketing and pricing
strategies are obviously important information for contributors as they derived their
future development planning from these. Thus the transparent communication of market
mechanisms influences the perceived openness of a platform. In this context it was
inevitable for developers to be able to communicate with the end users to derive
feedback on their actions. As they reported, features facilitating such communication
with end-users state a cornerstone of open distribution channels. Furthermore developers
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accounted to seek platforms that provide them with as much freedom as possible.
Furthermore, our research showed that from a developer‟s point of view any monetary
costs associated with the contribution to a platform impose additional risk and thus are
seen as financial entry barriers. This monetary risk has to be compensated by the
prospect of even higher revenues. For developers offering their applications to a vast
number of potential customers, the availability of a distribution channel is an essential
facet.
The resulting framework of perceived platform openness facets is presented in table 2.
Technical Platform
Distribution Channel
Exchange among complementors
Technical documentation
Technical support by provider
Learnability of technical standards
Availability of development tools
Technical interoperability
Functional range
Technical performance
Transparency of terms and conditions
Restrictive terms and conditions
Transparency of rules on content
Restrictive rules on content
Transparency of market mechanisms
Communication with end-users
Financial entry barriers
Availability of distribution channel
Table 2: Framework of Perceived Platform Openness Facets
3.2 Step 2: Quantitative Evaluation
For the purpose of evaluating the relative importance of the identified facets, we
performed a quantitative analysis on the facets of openness identified above.
Methodological Approach
In preparing an online survey, each of the facets of openness was transformed into an
easily understandable statement. In the survey instrument, an introduction including our
definition of openness was presented. Then, the developers were asked to mark all
openness-facets that had an impact on their platform-related development activities. In
order to derive some background information, a few simple questions on the
organizational background and the demographics of the developers were included. Due
to the results of a pre-test among five application developers and two researchers, several
of the openness statements were refined to eliminate possible misunderstandings and
ambiguity. A number of 4,978 Android application developers were invited to
participate, resulting in a total of 254 valid responses. The Android platform was chosen
due to the following considerations. First, Android is one of the currently leading
smartphone platforms and can be considered as a “typical” smartphone platform.
Second, unlike other platforms, the “Android Marketplace” features an email address to
contact the developer of an application which allowed us to conveniently contact a
randomly drawn sample of third-party developers.
The data-analysis was performed in two ways. First, to evaluate the relative importance
of the different platform openness facets, the facets were ranked by the percentage of
respondents that nominated the respective facet for having an impact on their platform-
related work.
Second, to capture the perspective of different developer types, the data was segmented.
Since one result of our qualitative interviews was that especially the groups of
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professional developers (employed and freelancers), amateurs (hobby programmers and
students) and entrepreneurs differed in their assessment of the openness-facets, the
organizational background was chosen as segmentation variable. For this purpose, the
participants of the quantitative survey were asked to complete the sentence “I primary
develop smartphone apps as ...” by selecting one of the options “employed developer”,
“contract developer / freelancer”, “hobby programmer”, “student (learning how to
develop apps)” or “entrepreneur (my business is built on smartphone apps)”.
Accordingly, the assignment of each respondent to one of the three above mentioned
groups resulted from the developers‟ self-reported primary background. For each of the
three groups, analogous descriptive rankings based on the number of nominations were
generated. Furthermore, the distributions of facet nominations were compared among the
three groups by means of an one way ANOVA followed by a Turkey HSD post hoc test
[BZ09].
Results
Regarding the technical facets of openness, 30% of the developers in our sample
indicated that the technical documentation had an impact on their work. Ranking second,
29% of our respondents nominated the provision of development tools for having an
impact on their work. On the other end, developers cared little about the exchange with
other developers (11%) and technical support from the platform provider (9%).
Figure 1: Ranking of Technical Facets of Openness.
Regarding the openness of the distribution channel, the most important facets were the
possibility to communicate with end-users (26%), followed by the general availability of
a distribution channel (22%). Surprisingly, and contrary to the public perception, the
transparency of terms and conditions (9%) and the communication of rules on the
content (10%) turned out to be the least important facets of the distribution channel‟s
openness.
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Technical support by provider
Exchange among complementors
Technical interoperability
Technical performance
Functional range
Learnability of technical standards
Availability of development-tools
Technical documentation
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Figure 2: Ranking of Facets concerning the Distribution Channel.
The descriptive rankings of the group comparison among professional developers,
amateurs and entrepreneurs are depicted in figures 3 and 4.
Figure 3: Comparison of Technical Facets Rankings between Amateurs, Professionals and
Entrepreneurs.
Regarding the technical facets amateurs showed only little interest in the technical
interoperability (6%), while professionals and entrepreneurs reported a significantly
higher impact of this facet (16% and 18%, p < 0.05).
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Transparency of terms and conditions
Communication of rules on content
Restrictive rules on the content
Restrictive terms and conditions
Transparency of market mechanisms
Financial entry barriers
Availability of distribution channel
Communication with end-users
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
Technical support by provider
Exchange among complementors
Technical interoperability
Technical performance
Functional range
Learnability of technical standards
Availability of development-tools
Technical documentation
Entrepreneur (N=71) %
Professional (N=74) %
Amateur (N=109) %
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Figure 4: Comparison of Distribution Channel Facets Rankings between Amateurs, Professionals
and Entrepreneurs.
Interestingly, for the distribution channel‟s facets, the most significant differences
occurred between entrepreneurs and the other two groups of developers (professionals
and amateurs). Especially the facets regarding the transparency of the terms and
conditions (17% vs. 9% and 4%, p < 0.01) and restrictive terms and conditions (21% vs.
11% and 7%, p < 0.01) were nominated significantly more often by entrepreneurs than
by the other two groups.
4 Discussion
In this section, we point out the implications of our results, discuss limitations along with
opportunities for further research and give a brief conclusion.
4.1 Implications
The results of our investigations allow several implications. First, in our qualitative
interviews, the majority of the participating developers stated that the openness of the
technical platform and the openness of the platform‟s marketplace are two different
things that have to be considered separately. For example, mobile platforms can be quite
open in terms of their technical feasibility while, simultaneously, only certain contents or
functionality may be distributed in the corresponding marketplace. Vice versa, platforms
that do not restrict access to their distribution channels may still fall short with regard to
their technical openness, for example, in terms of their technical interoperability with
other platforms. As such, the technical platform‟s openness and the distribution
channel‟s openness should be considered conceptually distinct dimensions of PPO. The
resulting implication for managers of smartphone software platforms is that managerial
decisions concerning the vertical openness of the platform and more general the
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Transparency of terms and conditions
Communication of rules on content
Restrictive rules on the content
Restrictive terms and conditions
Transparency of market mechanisms
Financial entry barriers
Availability of distribution channel
Communication with end- users
Entrepreneur (N=71) %
Professional (N=74) %
Amateur (N=109) %
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management of complementors should always integrate both perspectives, since the
isolated use of a single management lever might not lead to the desired results. A
positive example of integrating both sides was given by Apple in autumn 2010. The
platform provider simultaneously announced that the approval process for application
will become more transparent (a facet of the distribution channel‟s openness) and that
the policies concerning the use of third-party development tools will be relaxed (a facet
of the platform‟s technical openness)6.
Second, we find that in the perception of third-party developers, openness is not a
unitary concept but rather the sum of multiple single facets of openness. Both, the
technical platform and the distribution channel feature several fine-grained components
whose attributes in sum cause the developers‟ perception of the platform‟s openness.
Hence, approaches of changing the vertical platform openness can only be effective, if
they involve adjusting multiple facets in a concerted action. In the case of the
quantitatively investigated Android platform, the platform provider could increase the
platform‟s vertical openness most efficiently by revising and completing the technical
documentation, providing more sophisticated development-tools, and implement features
that enable the complementors to exchange with end-users, since these three facets were
identified as the most important ones in terms of their impact on the developers‟ work.
Third, the results of our group comparison revealed that the different groups of
developers in terms of their organizational background significantly differed in their
evaluation of the openness facets‟ impacts. This result indicates that platform managers
should differentiate which groups of complementors they want to address. For the
Android platform, we found that entrepreneurs especially value openness in terms of
transparent terms and conditions and fear restrictions concerning the content of their
applications, because the success of their business is tightly connected to these
governance issues. This is an important insight for platform managers because
entrepreneurs are an especially valuable group of complementors, since their
complementary applications are more likely to be innovative and hence improve the
overall attractiveness of the platform.
4.2 Limitations and Further Research
Our research approach involves some limitations. First, regarding our qualitative
investigations, it should be noted that owing to the limited number of observations and
the non-representative selection of interview partners, the possibility to generalize the
reported results and implications is limited [Yi08]. Second, our survey instrument and
the respective evaluations have to be considered as a preliminary approach of a
quantitative investigation, especially since the invited survey sample was limited to
Android developers. However, our results should be understood as a starting point for
more sophisticated research on antecedents and effects of the developers‟ perception of
platform openness. Transferring our approach to other software-based platforms (e.g.
B2B platforms like salesforce.com) and investigating the impact of perceived openness
on the developers‟ willingness to contribute to the platform ecosystem and could be two
relevant research questions in this field.
4.3 Conclusion
6 See http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/09/09statement.html.
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In this paper, we introduced the concept of perceived platform openness (PPO) as an
approach of investigating platform openness from third-party application developers‟
individual perspectives. Through a comprehensive qualitative investigation, we
identified a framework of 16 openness facets, attributing either to the technical platform
or the platform‟s distribution channel. Subsequently, the relative importance of these
facets was evaluated for the Android platform by means of a quantitative survey. In
doing so, our study‟s findings contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of
platform openness in particular and platform-centric ecosystems in general and, hence,
serve as an excellent starting point for further research on this topic.
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INFORMATIK 2011 - Informatik schafft Communities
41. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik , 4.-7.10.2011, Berlin
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erschienen im Tagungsband der INFORMATIK 2011
Lecture Notes in Informatics, Band P192
ISBN 978-3-88579-286-4
weitere Artikel online:
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