Research by Kobiton shows that releasing new releases of mobile apps costs most developers at least $100,000 on average. Using AI-based testing processes can bring these costs down significantly.
Kobiton specializes in mobile application testing. Based on that company’s survey, 75 percent of mobile app developers indicate that releasing (annual) new releases of mobile apps costs them at least $100,000 per year on average. Just over 10 percent even indicate that it costs them between $1 million and $10 million per year.
Causes of delays
The main cause of these high costs, according to the researchers, lies in the delays that mobile app update processes often suffer from. These delays are due to limited budgets in development and R&D departments, inefficient processes in development departments and also the lack of suitable employees.
These delays for mobile updates, according to the respondents, also have a negative impact on the customer experience. It also causes missed revenue and, in addition, more developers to leave their job.
Use of (generative) AI tooling
Most respondents are now trying to counter these problems by using (generative) AI tools for their update cycles. They do this primarily for updating scripts or code, but slightly more than half also use these tools for analyzing test results—slightly less than half use (generative) AI tooling for script generation.
According to respondents, the most exciting benefits of AI automation of development and testing processes are primarily those aimed at predicting possible errors. This is followed by AI tools for generating test cases and test data. Furthermore, AI tools such as natural language processing tools for better documenting test cases also score well.
Other use cases mentioned are those for image recognition for testing user interfaces and so-called “self-healing” strategies.
Developments ahead
Half the developers surveyed believe that using AI to automate application testing will eventually replace manual testing processes. Also, about a third see this tooling as an interesting opportunity to improve their development productivity.
Some respondents do indicate that they fear using (generative) AI, which may harm the quality of developed software and applications. Another 20 percent also indicated that AI tools could have a negative impact on work and career opportunities for software developers and testers.
Also read: Amazon announces generative AI tools we’ve known about for a long time