App development in Albania, trends and resources

5th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE Information Systems and Technology Innovations: projecting trends to a New

Economy

App development in Albania, trends and resources

Artur NURJA1, Kozeta Sevrani2

1,2 Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Applied Informatics,Faculty of Economy, University of Tirana

[email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract

Mobile technology in Albania. Finding between numbers some particularities of our mobile technology trends and possibilities. What does it mean to have almost 200%1. of penetration? Is this a good opportunity to offer many fast, reliable, secure and helpful services? Is this reflected in numbers, quality and success of apps? Who is writing apps and why? Is there a schoolbehind all this? How to shift the programming matters in our schools to reflect the mobile shift? The role and the interest of government, business, public and citizen in using the mobile resources effectively.

Keywords: Mobile, apps, Android, IOS, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, m-government, m-commerce, m-payments.

Introduction

Mobile applications are everywhere now. Globally speakingthere are millions of apps downloaded and installed severalbillion of times. The life is moving faster and broader. Alsothe work is being more and more connective and nomadic.Telephony is changed radically. The main part of phones noware mobile, smart and multifunctional.

In Albania more and more we use mobile applications, mainlywell-known streamline globally accepted games and social appsthan local apps.

This paper will try to “measure” the development of mobileapps in Albania or related to Albania context.

The questions to answer here are:

- Who is writing apps for Albanian context?- What kind of apps are writing these programmers?- What are the main categories of apps published by them?- What is their usage and monetary profit?

1

- What are the programming environments used by them?- What is their level of education?- What is their programming experience?- What is their mobile programming experience?- Are they affiliated in Albanian ICT organizations?

The contribution this paper try to bring is to make visiblewhat is happening with mobile programming in Albania, to putin evidence the human resources working for this in Albaniaand abroad, to reflect about how Albanian society can makemore effective use of such opportunity to use effectively thetechnology connecting better citizens.

Methodology of study

The study takes into consideration two groups of mobile apps:

- Apps created by programmers with Albanian nationality inAlbania or abroad. These apps can be related or not toAlbanian context.

- Apps created by non-Albanian programmers, related toAlbanian context.

This study include only native apps for four most usedoperating systems: Android, IOS, BlackBerry and WindowsMobile. The USSD, SMS, STK, Hybrid and Web Based applicationsare not included.

There was not an easy way to find existing statistics for themobile apps related to Albania or created from Albanians andwe faced different difficulties:

- Based on our search in Internet there was not yet apublished study about this subject.

- There were not statistics about mobile apps filtered bythe nationality or residence of the programmer.

- A large number of apps were created for Albanian contextby non-Albanian programmers.

- A part of apps related to Albania context are written byAlbanians living in other countries or by programmers ofother nationalities.


Economy

- There was not a single site offering statistics for allthe different app stores and for the different mobileoperating systems.

It was necessary to use information from app store analyticswebsites like appannie.com, play.google.com,appworld.blackberry.com, windowsphone.com, distimo.com, etc.

Is catalogued the data from these websites using a wide rangeof keywords like: Albania, Albanians, Tirana, Shqiperi, shqip,Albanian TV, Albanian radio, Albanian cities list, Albanianexpressions, etc. After finding a list of apps, the authorsname is used as a keyword in order to find the list of appspublished by them.

For every app found is collected the following information:the URL, the publisher, date of publication of the lastversion, price, category and download number range for GooglePlay Store apps.

For each publisher is taken the following information: the URLin store, the number of apps, e-mail address, the completelist of apps in all four stores for Albanian programmers, inAlbania or abroad or the list of apps in all four storesdedicated to Albanian Context for foreign programmers.

After this a questionnaire with 14 short questions is preparedand e-mails are send to more than half of publishers to gathermore data related to our topics.

Universities websites and High School Websites are searched tocheck their study programs, to find universities and highschools having Mobile Application Programming in theircurricula.

Finding all apps related to Albania in all app stores it is analmost impossible effort. This is related to the large numberof existing distribution online stores. Some of these storesare operating system – native distribution platforms like

3

Apple Store, Google Play, BlackBerry AppWorld, Windows PhoneStore, Amazon App Store, Nokia store, etc.

There exists also a number of third party mobile softwaredistribution platforms. We have not taken into considerationthese platforms.

Apps published privately in websites or distributed manuallyout of stores are not included in this study.

Only existing apps are taken into consideration. This meansthat apps created, published before our search began and thenremoved from the app stores are not count.

The gathering of information happened in the period April –May 30, 2014. Some apps catalogued in April now are notpresent anymore, but are taken into count.

In some cases the programmer or the company has used differentpublisher names for different apps. In cases they haveconfirmed this in e-mails, we have merged their data into onepublisher and counted only one publisher.

The findings:

There are around 889 apps related to Albania or programmed byAlbanian programmers in Albania or other countries. 28 % ofthese apps is programmed by non-Albanian programmers, 31 % byAlbanians in Albania and 42 % published by Albanians in othercountries.

Around 67 % of apps are published in Google Play Store, 26 %in Apple Store, 4% in BlackBerry AppWorld and 3 % in WindowsMobile Store.

Table 1: Apps related to Albania by nationality of publisher and operatingsystem

nationalityandroid iOS

BlackBerry

windows

totals

Albanian 186 84 4 4 278Albanian in other countries 242 125 0 10 377Other nationality 170 20 34 10 234


Economy

598 229 38 24 889

These apps are programmed by 227 programmers from which 36Albanians, 48 Albanians in other countries and 143 from othercountries.

Table 2: Publishers number, age and apps published bynationality and residence

Nationality Number

Age (average)

Albanian 36 28Albanian in other countries 48

31

Other nationalities 143

37

227In average Albanians in Albania or other countries published 8apps per programmer (with the highest number by twoindividuals of 40 apps each). Foreign programmers publishingfor Albanian context, published in average 128 apps (only1.8apps each for Albanian context). The main part of foreign publishers are companies like EctacoLingSoft, Map2App, SmartMapSolutions, etc. that based onsuccessful model of their apps have applied also Albanianversion of the apps.

It was only possible to have an approximate number ofdownloads per Android apps related to Albanian Context. GooglePlay store publish the number of downloads as a range ofdownloads. We can estimate that there are around 5.2 milliondownloads of Android apps, which means an average of 8.000downloads per app. There was only one app with more than 1million downloads, 3 apps over 100.000 downloads and 9 appsover 50.000 downloads.

Graph 1: Android apps by download number

5

The apps published are in majority free or free with in-apppurchase.

Table 3: Prices of published apps

platformFree or in app purchase (%)

Non free (%)

price range($)

android 80% 20%0.69 - 19.95

ios 42% 58%0.99 - 174.99

blackberry 22% 78%

0.99 - 19.99

windows 91% 9%0.99 - 2.99

From 598 Android apps, 115 were not free. Based on theirprices and average download number, these apps gathered 9185$with an average of 79.8$ per app. The highest paid has around3000$ revenues. This paper does not take into considerationthe in-app purchase revenues because of the lack of data.

Related to the categories of apps published we have studied515 android apps (from 598) and all other apps in three otheroperating system groups (IOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone).

The percentage of apps by categories are:

- Media (Online Radio, Online TV, media video, media music)with 23.2%. This can be related to the interest for


Economy

national media of Albanians abroad, but also we think itis related with the level of simplicity to prepare theseapps related to the popularity.

- Tourism with 14.28 %. In this category we included appsrelated to tourism promotion, maps, travel informationand navigation.

- Languages with 13.6%. This include vocabularies, teachingforeign languages, alphabet in different languages, etc.There is more interest to understand and learn Albanianthen to learn foreign languages.

- Games with 10.25 %. In this category we can find quizzes,Hangman for Albanian, but also some authentic made gameslike the game Skendermen.

The rest, including Education, Social, Business Lifestyle,Books and references, Tools, m-government, m-commerce, m-banking, etc.; is smaller in number of published apps.

The preference of users for each category is studied for 515apps in Android based on the download number.

- Media Music, Online TV, Media video, Religion, Travel;have more than 10.000 downloads in average per app, withthe maximum of 42.000 downloads in average for Online TV.

- Online Radio being the most published category is nottaking the highest attention from users but only 4082downloads per app.

- Languages apps are having an average of 1404 downloadsper app.

- M-government, m-commerce, m-banking, takes only 3% ofoverall apps and a very small estimated download rate of 1296 downloads per app.

The questionnaire2.

In order to have information about individuals programmingthese apps, is prepared a short questionnaire that was sent bye-mail to 158 from 227 programmers. From 158 programmersmailed, 29 of them answered to the questionnaire (18.4 %).Albanians had a relatively higher level of answer with 31 % (9

7

from 29 mailed), comparing to 30.3 % of Albanians in othercountries (10 from 33) and 10.4 % of foreign programmers (10from 96).

The questionnaire was trying to find out the profile of theseapp programmers: the age, the experience in programming and inmobile programming, level of education, education in ICT andin mobile programming, affiliation in Albanian ICT groups,programming environment, etc.

The foreign programmers declared that they are living in USA,UK, Germany, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Spain, Vietnam and India.The Albanian programmers in other countries declared that theyare living in Kosovo, Germany, Canada, Macedonia, Sweden andNorway.

From 28 answered for the level of education, 15 declared tohave a bachelor, 10 having a master degree, 1 having the gradedoctor, 1 having a high school and 1 having only primaryschool.

Results per each group and comparison is shown in the graph 2:

Graph 2: Education level in each group

From answering Albanian programmers, 8 of them have studied inAlbania and one in Italy. The answering Albanians living abroad have studied in Kosovo,Germany, USA, Macedonia, Norway and Sweden. The 10 answering


Economy

foreign programmers have studied in USA, Australia, Vietnam,Cambodia, India and Spain.

Table 4: Having Education in Programming and Mobile Programmingper group

Grouped by countryprogramming education

mobile programming education

Albanian 67% 0%Albanian in other countries 50% 10%Foreign 100% 10%

Table 5: Years of experience in Programming and MobileProgramming

Grouped by countryyears programming

years mobile programming

Albanian 6.8 2.9Albanian in other countries 6.8 3.2Foreign 10.8 4.2

The foreign programmers programmed and published earlier thenAlbanian programmers in Albania or abroad. The main part ofthem 70% were publishing their first app in 2009 and 2010.Instead 89 % of Albanian programmers published after 2012 and90% of Albanians abroad after 2010.

The programming environment used mainly are; Eclipse, AndroidSDK, iOS SDK, xCode. Other environments used include VisualStudio, Xamarin Studio, openGL, Cocoa, Sencha Touch, SpriteKit, Hybrid System, PhoneGap, Titanium Studio, Jquery Mobile.

Some of the Albanian programmers declared using the WYSIWYG orwebsites in Internet to build their apps and also using theRSS feeds to produce their content.

9

Education System in Albania, Related to Mobile Programming.

It was also studied about the presence in the curricula ofeducation system of Mobile Application Programming matter. Forthis is checked the current curricula of all AlbanianUniversities, public and private. Also it is checked theeducation program of high schools in Albania, includingtechnical oriented.

It is found that:

Mobile Programming is present only in:

- Faculty of Natural Science, University of Tirana, Masterof Informatics for Business and Master in InformationTechnology3.

- Faculty of Economy, University of Tirana, MSc. inInformatics of Business4..

- Epoka University of Tirana, courses ECE373, CEN5165.

CONCLUSIONS

- Even if mobile communication is the main platform toserve Albanian citizen the number of apps written forAlbania, or written from Albanians is very low.

- After 2012 the interest for mobile apps is growing inAlbania.

- There is not a proportional relation between thecategories of apps published and interest shown by users.

- M-government, m-commerce, m-banking, m-payment need moreattention to use efficiently the mobile infrastructure inorder to surround the citizen with faster, omnipresent,24x7, secure and reliable government services

- Education system must show more interest to the mobileprogramming education of student. It is a possibility anda good move to introduce mobile programming even in highschool to promote a larger base of mobile programmerswhich will be able to program not only for Albania butalso for the global market.

References:


Economy

1. AKEP publications: Statistics of the first 6 months 2013

2. List of mobile software distribution platforms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_software_distribution_platform

3. http://informatika.fshn.edu.al/studime-master/master-profesional/master-profesional-nee-informatikee-biznesi

4. http://www.fti.edu.al/pages/115

5. http://epoka.edu.al/

11

Appendix


Economy

13

App development in Albania, trends and resources

Documents

Transcript of App development in Albania, trends and resources