Interoperability ranking for mobile applications

Abstract

At present, most major app marketplaces perform ranking and recommendation based on search relevance features or marketplace ``popularity'' statistics. For instance, they check similarity between app descriptions and user search queries, or rank-order the apps according to statistics such as number of downloads, user ratings etc. Rankings derived from such signals, important as they are, are insufficient to capture the dynamics of the apps ecosystem. Consider for example the questions: In a particular user context, is app A more likely to be launched than app B? Or does app C provide complementary functionality to app D-- Answering these questions requires identifying and analyzing the dependencies between apps in the apps ecosystem. Ranking mechanisms that reflect such interdependences are thus necessary.