Mobile Application Recommender System

Abstract: With the amount of mobile applications available increasing rapidly, users have to put a lot of effort into finding applications of interest. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how to aid users in the process of discovering new mobile applications by providing them with recommendations. A prototype system is then built as a proof-of-concept. The work of the thesis is divided into three phases where the aim of the first phase is to study related work and related systems to identify promising concepts and features. During the second phase, a prototype system is designed and implemented. The outcome and result of the first two phases is then evaluated and analyzed in the third and final phase. The prototype system integrates and extends an existing recommender engine previously used to recommend media items. As a part of the system, an Android application is developed, which observes user actions and presents recommended applications to the user. In parallel to the development, the system was tested by a small group of users recruited among colleagues at Ericsson. The data generated during this test period is analyzed to show the usefulness of observed user actions over explicit ratings and the dependency on context for application usage.