Coronavirus in the mobile device ecosystem: Developers, discourses and reception

Abstract

Introduction: This research explores the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the ecosystem of mobile applications. Methodology: The search and location of apps on COVID19 on the Google Play and Apple Store platforms is used to select the ones with the greatest impact and diffusion for which a quantitative analysis was performed. Results: The research has focused on four aspects: (1) the appearance of these applications and their evolution according to current events during the first months of 2020; (2) the characteristics, purposes, and features of the discourse; (3) what traits identified the issuers and, finally, (4) the reception that users made about the apps. Discussion: the two main types of developers (government entities and private initiatives) focused on disease control and diagnosis applications, along with others that tried to alleviate the growing demand for information.