Swift advances in mobile communication technology have spawned almost unlimited new mobile applications. Mobile application development is an extremely well growing industry across the globe that created new opportunities of modern businesses and pioneered new technologies in the area. In order to build high quality mobile applications, it is imperative to understand the key characteristics that define mobile applications, which if wisely considered and implemented, can facilitate the delivery of truly exceptional, valuable and user friendly mobile apps that satisfy users’ needs. Only few scientific publications can be found which specifically identify the key characteristics and what makes mobile applications different from traditional software. For this purpose, we conducted an online survey from the mobile research and development community. The survey questions covered the entire mobile application development lifecycle starting from inception to the maintenance stage. This paper presents the survey results by classifying the key characteristics that differentiate mobile applications from traditional ones into three categories: Hardware, Software (application interaction, application development, and application security) and Communication. The study contributes towards a greater understanding of mobile software and the current trends in the mobile application development. It also highlights various features and attributes that assist in developing high quality mobile software applications.

The mobile device market has witnessed swift industrial growth over the last decade. The quick expansion of this new computing platform has almost outpaced the software engineering processes customized to mobile application development. However, there is still lack of novel research initiatives around the mobile application development process. There remains a deficiency in development standards and best practices which expose the mobile device to potential attacks. This deficiency needs to be addressed promptly and requires further work.
The objective of this research is to better understand the current methodologies adapted and to investigate challenges faced during the mobile application development processes that are different from traditional enterprise application. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted from the mobile research and development community. The survey questions covered the entire mobile application development lifecycle starting with requirements, and ending with bringing to life a complete mobile application.
The study contributes towards a greater understanding of mobile application development process, examines real challenges confronted, and investigates the best practices that can be successfully implemented to enhance, evaluate, and improve the performance of the mobile application development process. These findings can also be considered as a possible research topic that indicates the breadth of research requirements and prospects in mobile computing.