SOASTA® Inc., the leader in cloud and mobile testing, today announced the findings of a series of surveys questioning American adults about their concerns when buying mobile apps, and the issues developers face with testing apps before they are released.  Harris Interactive conducted an online survey on behalf of SOASTA among 3,130 American adults ages 18+ (the consumer study), while uSamp polled 1,309 information technology specialists and mobile app developers (the developer study). Both surveys occurred in July, 2013. SOASTA commissioned the research due to its position as the leading provider of cloud and mobile testing solutions for leading brands. The results of the consumer study show that 77% of consumers who purchase mobile apps have concerns that would prevent them from buying a mobile app, while it appears that developers are not doing enough to ensure a high quality user experience for their apps that reach the market.
 
Results from the developer study suggest that developers are craving cost-effective, efficient, and easy to use software to aid in the mobile app testing process, while consumers want higher quality apps.
 
According to the consumer study, the concerns U.S. consumers who ever buy mobile apps have that would prevent them from buying a mobile app include:
• Bugs (58%)
• Crashes (57%)
• Performance (48%)
• Speed (32%)
• App does not respond to gestures or swipes (30%)
• Other (10%)
 
According to the developer study, the primary reasons developers cited as reasons for not testing apps include:
• Cost (51%)
• Time (51%)
• Absence of a good Freemium solution (36%)
• Hard to learn testing software (33%)
• Lack of testing skills at their companies (20%)
 
“User experience is top of the agenda in mobile today, and by taking an automated cloud-based testing approach and understanding your audience better with real user monitoring, developers can make sure their apps are ready for prime time,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO.
Today SOASTA also announced TouchTest LITE, the new free version of TouchTest. TouchTest allows developers to overcome the challenges in mobile app testing providing a fast, reliable test automation solution for today’s quick development cycles.
 
In the consumer study, of those who own smartphones,  men were more likely than women to express apprehensions when purchasing a mobile app (66% v. 58%, respectively).   Additionally, millennial smartphone owners ages 18-34 were statistically more likely than their counterparts aged 55+ to have concerns that would prevent them from buying an app (76% v. 48%, respectively). Men were more likely than women to be were concerned with speed (30% v. 21%, respectively) while the Northeast (46%) and West (44%) regions were statistically more likely than the Midwest and South (33% and 35%, respectively) to be concerned with performance.