Abstract
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.