Abstract
Mobile platforms are rapidly and continuously changing, with support for new sensors, APIs, and programming abstractions. Static analysis is gaining a growing interest, allowing developers to predict properties about the run-time behavior of mobile apps without executing them. Over the years, literally hundreds of static analysis techniques have been proposed, ranging from structural and control-flow analysis to state-based analysis.In this paper, we present a systematic mapping study aimed at identifying, evaluating and classifying characteristics, trends and potential for industrial adoption of existing research in static analysis of mobile apps. Starting from over 12,000 potentially relevant studies, we applied a rigorous selection procedure resulting in 261 primary studies along a time span of 9 years. We analyzed each primary study according to a rigorously-defined classification framework. The results of this study give a solid foundation for assessing existing and future approaches for static analysis of mobile apps, especially in terms of their industrial adoptability.Researchers and practitioners can use the results of this study to (i) identify existing research/technical gaps to target, (ii) understand how approaches developed in academia can be successfully transferred to industry, and (iii) better position their (past and future) approaches for static analysis of mobile apps.
Highlights
Nowadays, the digital media usage time is driven by mobile devices, with smartphone and tablets accounting for 66% of all time spent, against desktop usage which accounts for 34% only [2]
We established the need for performing a review on static analysis of mobile app (Section 3), we identified the main research questions (Section 4.1), and we defined the protocol to be followed by the involved researchers
11 Conclusions The systematic mapping study reported in this paper permitted us to precisely characterize the most relevant methods and techniques for statically analyzing mobile apps
Summary
The digital media usage time is driven by mobile devices, with smartphone and tablets accounting for 66% of all time spent, against desktop usage which accounts for 34% only [2]. The main key success factors of mobile apps is the distribution model offered by dedicated app stores, such as Google Play for Android apps, and the Apple app store for iOS apps As of today, these stores make available millions of mobile apps of different categories to millions of people, who use them for their everyday activities like purchasing products, messaging, etc. Revenue and profit of a mobile app is often proportional to the number of its users [240], who may enjoy using the app (and possibly rate it positively in the store) or dislike it (and possibly abandon it or even leaving a negative review in the store) This implies that improving the level of users satisfaction is fundamental for app developers to both keep existing users active and attract new ones. Hybrid apps are web-based apps hosted inside a native application
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