Platform adoption by mobile application developers: A multimethodological approach

摘要

This paper investigates the factors that influence the adoption of IT platforms by software developers and how those factors differ from those that influence IT adoption by end-users. We take a multi-methodological approach, beginning with an interpretive field study where we interview mobile application developers. In the initial interpretive phase, we identify a comprehensive set of influences on developers' platform adoption, comparing them with the factors that have been identified in previous studies of end-user adoption, noting key differences. In the second phase, we empirically test the factors identified in our interviews. We find several key differences between end-user adoption of IT and developer adoption of IT platforms. Most notably, we observe the importance of network externality considerations when developers make an adoption decision, a consideration that is largely absent for end-users. Our study is among the first to comment on B2B and B2C issues in the adoption phenomenon where developers adopt a platform as technology producers (a B2B consideration) in order to ultimately provide mobile applications to end-users who are technology consumers (a B2C consideration).