Characterization of early smartwatch apps

Abstract

Wearable smart devices are already amongst us. Currently, smartwatches are one of the key drivers of the wearable technology and are being used by a large population of consumers. This paper takes a first look at this increasingly popular technology with a systematic characterization of the smartwatch app markets. We conduct a large scale analysis of three popular smartwatch app markets: Android Wear, Samsung, and Apple, and characterize more than 14,000 smartwatch apps in multiple aspects such as prices, number of developers and categories. Our analysis shows that approximately 41% and 30% of the apps in Android Wear and Samsung app markets are Personalization apps that provide watch faces. Further, we provide a generic taxonomy for apps on all three platforms based on their packaging and modes of communication, that allow us to investigate apps with respect to privacy and security. Finally, we study the privacy risks associated with the app usage by identifying third party trackers integrated into these apps and personal information leakage through network traffic analysis. We show that a higher percentage of Apple apps (62%) are connected to third party trackers compared to Samsung (36%) and Android Wear (46%).