EXPLORING FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: EVIDENCE FROM GHANA

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explore factors that influence mobile application development among Ghanaian mobile application development (MAD) firms and to assess whether these factors pose as threats and/or opportunities to these firms. This research argues that in spite of the growth in popularity of portable devices in recent years, there is still lack of adequate research initiatives around mobile applications and its development processes. This study therefore dwells on the tenets of critical realism and employs a qualitative methodological approach, to analyse the experiences of MAD firms in order to describe how they develop mobile applications amidst the constraints of their context. Further, in the quest to find answers to research questions raised, the study employed Miles and Huberman’s transcendental realism data analysis approach to analyse a multiple case study conducted among two Ghanaian MAD firms (Origgin and Nandimobile Limited). Eleven factors were identified through thorough mobile application development literature review; market trends, promoter and developer events, potential market demand, developer involvement, monetary rewards, intrinsic rewards and motivations, cross platform development and user convenience. However, fourteen factors including nine of the eleven aforementioned were realised after data collection, analysis and discussion. New factors that were found to be relevant constraints or enablers include smartphone adoption, data cost, competitive pressure, payment culture, native development and firm size thereby revealing ten propositions at the end of the study. For instance, as smartphone adoption by app users in Ghana continues to grow, this phenomenon interspersed with television commercials inciting people to drop basic/feature phones was found to be one of the motivations for application development among Ghanaian MAD firms. Secondly, Mobile application developing firms are skewed to develop free applications due to unavailability of trusted online payment infrastructures in Ghana. This factor from the discussion indicated that although the case firms  develop paid applications, they are developed on the basis of cash or cheque payments (contract applications) for organisations whiles individual consumption applications are therefore deployed as free applications with the plan of recouping financial gains through imbedded adverts. This study fills gap of the paucity of research work done on mobile application development in Ghana and Africa as a whole. This study in relation to practice, opens wide the challenges and opportunities in the developer space for institutions aiming to branch into mobile applications development informing them of the complex interaction between technological, organisational and environmental factors. Considering that, the developer space in Ghana lacks regulation and governance, this research calls on government agencies to consider regulating the space for a fairer game specifically with respect to mobile internet cost. The originality of this study lies in the researcher’s adoption of the Technology, Organisation and Environment framework which has been widely used in quantitative terms to conduct a qualitative research and also within mobile application development. It is recommended that future studies should consider the issue of cloud computing and mobile application development. Further, African higher educational institutions should consider incorporating mobile application development into their curricula since it is an emerging trend.