3 Reasons Behind Inadequate Testing of Mobile Apps

 he present century ushered in the era of mobile technology which has opened up many avenues for organizations to grow. This era also brought in various innovations. One such innovation is mobile applications that we now highly depend on for almost everything.  The Strategy Analytics App Ecosystem Opportunities (AEO) forecast - Mobile Apps Revenue Forecast: 2008 – 2017 – predicts that by 2017 the mobile app smartphone market will generate more than $35B growing from less than $1B in 2009.

However, according to a recent study by Capgemini and Sogeti in conjunction with HP, two- thirds of mobile application companies are inadequately testing their apps. It was found that in organizations that conducts quality assurance on mobile apps, 64% of them focused on performance, 46% on functionality while only 18 % on security. "Consistent and reliable software applications have become critical to the operations of many organisations. Yet the lack of confidence in most companies' internal abilities to monitor and test the quality of their software is resounding, particularly when it comes to mobile applications," said Michel de Meijer, Global Service Line Testing Lead, Capgemini Group.

Jennifer Lent on searchsoftwarequality.com highlighted some of the reasons why many software testing organizations are not giving mobile app testing the priority it deserves. Take a look at what she has to say.

Testing organizations are not serious about mobile apps

Many of the testing organizations look at mobile apps as "mini smartphone apps".  Steve Woodward from Cloud Perspectives said that many testing organizations have a mentality that the applications should work and it wouldn't be a big problem if there are defects in the application. Testing organizations shouldn't have this type of mentality as many of the applications that are flooding the market today are designed keeping in mind the various objectives of a business organization.

Evaluating the app performance in various environment
Mobile applications are expected to perform in the same way across different real world conditions. Testing mobile applications is restricted only to the labs and it is impossible to replicate the various conditions mobile application users will experience in the real world informed Matt Johnston from uTest.

A Low Price Tag
With the number of mobile applications increasing day by day, there is a cut throat completion among many developers to deliver an app with a lower price tag before the deadline for the release. Thus, to bring down the cost, many may restrict testing only to the performance and functionality aspects and ignoring the need to security test their apps.