EcoSmart: a survey and sector analysis of mobile phone application market for fuel consumption reduction Vittorio Astarita 1,a , Demetrio C. Festa 1,b , Domenico W. E. Mongelli 1,c , Nunzio Mongelli 1,d , Oreste Ruffolo 1,e and Angelo Servino 1,f 1 University of Calabria - 45B, Ponte Pietro Bucci, Rende (CS), ITALY a vastarita@tiscali.it, b dc.festa@unical.it c domenico.mongelli@unical.it, d nunzio.mongelli@gmail.com, e oresteruffolo@yahoo.it, f anserv87@gmail.com Keywords: OBD interface, Mobile Application, Mobile Market, Fuel consumption. Abstract. The spread of Smartphones and Tablets has led to the birth and the development of a new business: mobile applications on smartphones. Mobile telephony’s continuous growth implies a large number of users that can access all applications of online stores. Mobile business is evolving continuously and offers applications that grant many different innovative services and at the same time mobile business offers many opportunities of development for companies and corporations because participating this new sector is becoming more and more required to improve performances and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is a quantitative analysis of the smartphone application market through a survey of users desires and an analysis of different mobile application features and business models. The results of the survey provide a full representation of the mobile market potential, with a focus on the applications that work on fuel consumption reduction and road safety. In this framework an evaluation of the presented application EcoSmart is carried out. The application estimates user’s fuel consumption and returns conclusions about his driving style (with focus on fuel consumption). The user can also review offline his paths and the geo-localised driving style data thanks to the Smartphone’s GPS. The EcoSmart application replaces the OBD device and the consumption data, that can be obtained from the car engine, approximating fuel consumption just based on the dynamic of vehicle motion that is evaluated on GPS data. This procedure is simple and innovative. This study provides a demand survey for this kind of services and a sector analysis. The survey has been carried out using traditional market research methods, with a qualitative approach that is used to understand user’s habits of purchase and user’s desires. The second one was realised investigating the applications which are similar to EcoSmart on the Apple’s Appstore and the Google Play Store, analysing their features and how they can be distributed to the users. Mobile Market and analysis of the offer The evolution and growing popularity of smartphones and tablet, the proliferation of mobile applications and websites, the excellent penetration of mobile services on users, together with the development of next-generation cellular networks, are creating an innovative and incredible ecosystem of business defined by scholars and experts as "Mobile Economy" [1,2,3]. The penetration of Smartphones in late 2011 in Italy exceeds 20 million users, about 42% of phone holders; the number of Italians who use the Internet from their mobile phone every month amounted to about 15 million: Italians spend an average of 45 minutes a day on the mobile browsers. In Italy the Mobile Applications downloaded from the App Stores have doubled in absolute terms during 2011, for a total value of 75 million euro, with an increasing role in revenues from the "In-App Billing" Apple dominates the sale of apps, holding over 85% market share; the Games category leads the ranking of the 50 most profitable applications (those that generate higher revenues) on the Apple App Store and on Google Play. This is what emerges from recent research conducted by the Observatory Mobile Internet, Content & Apps, promoted by the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano [4]. Of all the business opportunities made available by the New Media, the Mobile platform has the potential for greater development. Mobile Applications have now become useful tools for the Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols. 519-520 (2014) pp 1546-1555 Online available since 2014/Feb/06 at www.scientific.net © (2014) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.519-520.1546 All rights reserved. No part of contents of this paper may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of TTP, www.ttp.net. (ID: 82.91.101.105-04/07/14,17:18:52)