Explicit and Implicit Ratings for Mobile Applications

: Today most mobile operating systems provide an application portal (e.g. Android Market, AppStore) where users can search by keywords and explicitly rate applications published by third-party developers. In this paper we go beyond this approach and introduce an implicit rating mechanism for Android programs. Our approach, captures installation, update, and removal events, and allows to show them among users. Based on these measurements we calculate implicit ratings. As a result we compare these ratings with explicit ratings from the Android Market. For applications with less than 5,000 downloads implicit ratings provide more information than users explicitly enter on Android Market.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: GI
• Authors: Andrea Girardello, Florian Michahelles
• Keywords: Android, GI 2010, Implicit Ratings, Mobile Operating Systems, Theoretical Computer Science