Mobile Application Testing For Developing High-quality Apps
Today, most enterprises are looking at assimilating mobile apps into their mainstream computing environment. They are extending their enterprise applications to mobile devices due to several benefits like anytime/anywhere connectivity, ease of use, and ability to enhance the efficiency of day-to-day activities. The adoption of mobile apps can be seen across various business processes like email, calendaring, sales, field service, enterprise asset management, inventory management, logistics, supply chain management, and transportation and shipping management.
According to market research firm IDC mobile vendors shipped a total of 302.6 million smartphones worldwide in 2010, an increase of 74.4% from 173.5 million smartphones shipped in 2009. With the massive worldwide adoption of mobile phones, smartphones, and tablets, mobile apps are witnessing a great deal of attention from package application software vendors. High potential for revenue growth is turning out to be the main draw for enterprise vendors to develop packaged mobile apps for business processes and take the mobile route for extending their core business solutions.
But, the stiff competition in the mobile application landscape is forcing vendors to remain more cautious about the quality, speed time-to-market, and costs. Even a smallest defect can result in the failure of a mobile application. For example, if a mobile app is launched with great functionality and usage, but if it found that it eats away too much batter power, then it may not see good amount of success and may not last long enough in the market. Hence, testing plays a crucial role in the success of a mobile application. Mobile application testing helps enterprises to find out if software applications function as intended with devices or applications of other participants in the mobility ecosystem, while enabling enterprises to detect any application issues and reduce the total quality assurance time and cost. But, no single testing method or tool is sufficient due to huge complexity arising out of the diversity in mobile computing environment and the intricacy of mobile hardware and software.
It is essential to test mobile apps on various aspects like functionality, ease-of-use, performance, compatibility, and interoperability. Effective evaluation of these aspects can be done by implementing various testing methods like functional, performance, load, stress, usability, and compatibility and interoperability testing. Device emulators can also be used to perform testing quickly and efficiently, especially during the initial phases of development and testing. On the whole, a right testing strategy combining a mix of several testing methods and using emulators when required is the key in resolving several issues from hardware, OS, and end-user perspectives, while ensuring cost, quality and shorter time-to-market.
According to market research firm IDC mobile vendors shipped a total of 302.6 million smartphones worldwide in 2010, an increase of 74.4% from 173.5 million smartphones shipped in 2009. With the massive worldwide adoption of mobile phones, smartphones, and tablets, mobile apps are witnessing a great deal of attention from package application software vendors. High potential for revenue growth is turning out to be the main draw for enterprise vendors to develop packaged mobile apps for business processes and take the mobile route for extending their core business solutions.
But, the stiff competition in the mobile application landscape is forcing vendors to remain more cautious about the quality, speed time-to-market, and costs. Even a smallest defect can result in the failure of a mobile application. For example, if a mobile app is launched with great functionality and usage, but if it found that it eats away too much batter power, then it may not see good amount of success and may not last long enough in the market. Hence, testing plays a crucial role in the success of a mobile application. Mobile application testing helps enterprises to find out if software applications function as intended with devices or applications of other participants in the mobility ecosystem, while enabling enterprises to detect any application issues and reduce the total quality assurance time and cost. But, no single testing method or tool is sufficient due to huge complexity arising out of the diversity in mobile computing environment and the intricacy of mobile hardware and software.
It is essential to test mobile apps on various aspects like functionality, ease-of-use, performance, compatibility, and interoperability. Effective evaluation of these aspects can be done by implementing various testing methods like functional, performance, load, stress, usability, and compatibility and interoperability testing. Device emulators can also be used to perform testing quickly and efficiently, especially during the initial phases of development and testing. On the whole, a right testing strategy combining a mix of several testing methods and using emulators when required is the key in resolving several issues from hardware, OS, and end-user perspectives, while ensuring cost, quality and shorter time-to-market.
