The Improvement of the Trustworthiness of Android App Stores in China
The absence of Google Play has created a booming area for Android app distribution through third-party app stores in China. Since the study showed that the trustworthy level of app stores was fairly low in 2014, much attention should be paid on the changes of the trustworthiness of Android app stores. In this paper, we present a method to analyze the changes of trustworthiness of the top popular Android app stores in China. In this method, we evaluate the target app stores by analyzing the sampled apps hosted in them. Further more, we have used this method to track the changes of trustworthy level of Android app stores in China about two years. The results indicate that the trustworthy level of the top popular Android app stores in China has been improved 24% on average. It can be seen that the positive changes may be related to the development of the China's mobile market, the improvement of Android system, and the introduced policies. Although the trustworthy level of top popular Android app stores in China is still low, it is predicted to be improving in the future.