A look into developer intentions for app compatibility in android

Android apps have become a primary domain of software applications. However, various causes (e.g., fragmentation and SDK evolution) have led to growing compatibility issues in Android, as especially experienced by end users as these issues causing installation/execution failures of apps. Toward systematically understanding the compatibility issues in the Android ecosystem, this paper looks into developers' intentions for achieving compatibility of apps and/or preventing potential compatibility issues. We characterized such intentions as reflected via relevant app attributes, in 100,925 benign and malicious apps developed in years 2010-2017. We observed that, among many other findings, there were always developers whose intentions were clearly against Android's compatibility recommendations. Generally, malware developers' intentions were significantly and largely different from those of benign apps. The intentions were also constantly evolving, gradually moving to target newer platforms yet with years of delay, with a slower pace in malware. The compatibility intentions, however, were not always fulfilled as expected, despite the specific platform versions intended for.