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Early on, mobile devices were simply used for making or receiving calls. Ultimately, organizations realized that the purpose of mobile phones could be ingrained into their business operations by adding new technologies into it and improving its features and capabilities (Baktha, 2017; Pandey, Litoriya, & Pandey, 2019a). Rather than being just a verbal communication tools, mobile devices have been extended to be an essential part of people’s communication and daily life. Nowadays, millions of mobile phones owners rely on mobile applications for many essential daily uses. Mobile devices have been relied on to access online services such as social networking (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn), online banking (transactions and balance sheet), emailing (scheduling meetings and manage work), and solving problems (Amen, Mahmood, & Lu, 2015; Ma, Gu, & Wang, 2014; Song, Baker, Wang, Choi, & Bhattacherjee, 2018). Many organizations such as healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, real estate, transport, IT services and retail are increasingly promoted by mobile applications (Pandey et al., 2019a). These organizations are interestingly seeking to maximize return on investment to their businesses and gain a competitive advantage of the use of mobile applications along with their environment (Husam, Luke, & Louis, 2017; Markdy & Alexander, 2019; Smutný, 2012); therefore, mobile applications are increasingly becoming in-demand, and thus, a vast numbers of mobile applications are spread into market for various purposes (Abdul & Jianhua, 2017; Chopdar, Korfiatis, Sivakumar, & Lytras, 2018; Pandey, Litoriya, & Pandey, 2019b).
The proliferation of mobile devices and growing demand for mobile applications have stimulated many vendors to get on board and contribute to the provision of mobile application development platforms (MADPs) (Ahmad et al., 2018; Appiah, Hayfron-Acquah, Panford, & Twum, 2015; Hansen, Grønli, Ghinea, & Alouneh, 2019). The ultimate objective of MADPs vendors is to target as many developers as possible by providing them with different integrated development environments (IDEs), programming languages, APIs, and Apps distribution market (Baktha, 2017; El-Kassas, Abdullah, Yousef, & Wahba, 2017). Although the selection of MADPs is mainly market-driven, it also depends on their capabilities and business and technical requirements of the organization (Pandey, Litoriya, & Pandey, 2018b). In general, the adoption of a MADP and toolset is not an easy process especially for developers who are familiar with the features and the specifications of each platform (Gavalas & Economou, 2011; Hansen et al., 2019). Developers who go in deep with the platforms and study the details that are related to it will have more difficulties on making a decision and identifying which platform could be the best to be adopted for developing desired applications (Huang & Korfiatis, 2015). The choice of a specific platform for an organization will also be crucial for appraising the developers’ efforts and work and giving their business the desired value. Achieving the greatest benefit and value for the organization will need a careful decision of which MADP to choose. Such a decision will also be important to evaluate how valuable is the time they spend working on their mobile application development and weather it deserves it or not (Ahmad et al., 2018; Appiah et al., 2015).