A Survey on Today's Smartphone Usage

Diploma Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Computer Science - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,3, Technical University of Berlin (Agententechnologien in betrieblichen Anwendungen), language: English, abstract: The smartphone market is evolving rapidly, irrespective of the well-known spread within the business sector. In recent years the average users tend to replace their traditional mobile phones, PDAs and Palms with smartphones. These devices have become a pervasive part of everyday life. Dealing with huge amounts of data, the mobile device's and application's demand for certain security standards cannot be underestimated. In recent studies the individual user's needs in terms of technical features, applications etc. have not been addressed and analyzed properly. To capture the problem in its full extent it is vital to understand the user's expectations. Besides, the usage patterns have to be described especially against the background of security aspects. As mentioned before, recent analyzes did not specifically ask what the user expects from a smartphone. Hence, the main objective of this work is to get a broad picture on how smartphones are used today and what users expect, taking into consideration security aspects.. An international web-based online survey was designed and performed to measure and analyze users' behaviour when using smartphones, with the aim of finding out what they want and expect from a smartphone. The main goals were to identify user needs in the context of smartphones, to analyze their knowledge and acquisition to security aspects and to get significant data about the user's behaviour. The main findings of the survey are that on the one hand, most of the users want a smartphone to provide classic mobile phone features, such as performing phone calls, writing messages or storing contacts. On the other hand they want a smartphone to provide mobile internet access, navigation features, multimedia aspects, a comfortable usability and a good look and feel/design. The brand, price and battery performance plays a minor role for them. With respect to security aspects, most of the users have a good knowledge about security in general, pointing out that the security of the smartphone is a very important aspect for them. The obtained results can be provided as recommendations to smartphone vendors, application developers and carriers, who can use them in product portfolio management and product development