Is digital piracy an enemy of the mobile app industry? An empirical study on piracy of mobile apps

Hoon S. Choi, Yoris A. Au, Charles Z. Liu

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

This research revisits the issue of software piracy in the emerging mobile apps market and seeks to empirically examine the controversial impact of piracy on the market performance of the legitimate apps. In particular, the study attempts to empirically examine how the presence (or absence) of free app affects the extent of piracy, and consequently, the adoption of the paid apps in the mobile app market, and whether such relationships are moderated by the varying degrees of network effects in these mobile apps. A set of hypotheses will be empirically tested using a panel dataset collected from both legitimate and pirated mobile app markets over a four-month period. Based on the findings, the study will attempt to offer insights to app developers and market designers on how to create mechanisms to curb piracy, stem the resulting losses, and foster a healthy growth of the mobile app market.

Original languageEnglish
StatePublished - 2014
Event20th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2014 - Savannah, GA, United States
Duration: Aug 7 2014Aug 9 2014

Conference

Conference20th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2014
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySavannah, GA
Period08/7/1408/9/14

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Information Systems
  • Library and Information Sciences

Keywords

  • Digital piracy
  • Mobile apps
  • Network effect
  • Network externalities
  • Sampling effect
  • Word-of-mouth

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