Analyzing mobile app data demand and usage behavior in Sri Lanka

Owing to the rapid advancement of mobile computing, daily human practices have become more efficient and convenient. Consequently, the number of mobile app users has increased drastically over the last ten years, and a significant amount of energy is consumed by those mobile apps where the energy consumption depends on the data usage of the apps. Therefore, it is important to optimize data consumption to ensure sustainable digitalization. Mobile app personalization is one of the vital areas to optimize the data consumption of mobile apps. In this research, mobile app data usage and user experience data were collected and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The data were collected from 40 Android smartphone users in Sri Lanka. Primarily, semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data to identify mobile app usage patterns. In addition, data usage of each mobile app was collected using the in-built data usage tracker in Android smartphones for four months. Descriptive and correlation analyses were used to analyze quantitative data, whereas thematic and content analyses drew insights from the collected qualitative data. Our findings show the most data-demanding mobile app categories in terms of data consumption as social media, video players & editors, and communication. Moreover, users aged between 21 to 30 contribute to the high data consumption in mobile app usage. In addition, qualitative analysis shows that app usage behavior varied during and after the pandemic, and elderly (51-65 years) mobile app users use only a limited number of features from an app.