The growing role of artificial intelligence in mobile testing

The demand for high-quality mobile applications continues unabated. To ensure that each of the more than seven million apps now available on the iOS and Android platforms functions smoothly, extensive testing is required before release. A study commissioned by Tricentis and conducted by Censuswide reveals that almost half (47%) of the 1,000 IT professionals and application developers surveyed in the US, UK, Germany and Singapore from industries such as financial services and banking, retail, healthcare, manufacturing and energy still use manual testing for mobile applications. This is despite the realization that fully automating mobile application testing could save up to three quarters (51-75%) of the budget allocated to testing each year.

The challenges involved in developing and testing mobile apps are many and varied. These range from incompatible devices or platforms to complicated user interfaces. 99 percent of respondents said their organizations have encountered obstacles when implementing development and testing strategies, including competing priorities (27 percent), lack of technical expertise and talent (25 percent), lack of time (25 percent), complexity of implementation strategy (25 percent), cross-platform compatibility (25 percent) and excessive costs (25 percent). The aspects that play the most important role in app development differ depending on the industry. For the retail and utilities sectors, user experience is at the top of the list, whereas for the healthcare and energy sectors it is security. The large number of different problems and focal points is probably also responsible for the preference for manual test runs to date.

AI and automation as a solution

However, the survey results show that major changes are on the horizon: Nearly half (49 percent) of respondents report that their organizations are already using artificial intelligence (AI) for app testing, with another 21 percent planning to do so in the next six months. Respondents expect AI not only to improve the quality of mobile applications (37%), but also to increase productivity (36%), improve user experience (34%) and reduce vulnerability and/or bugs (32%).

Overall, it can be concluded from these results that organizations are increasingly looking to reduce a wider range of testing processes within a DevOps workflow through automation in order to reduce costs. The survey shows that just under a third (32 percent) of respondents expect their organizations to invest more than a million dollars in further testing automation over the next 12 months.

As testing processes continue to modernize, profitability in mobile application development will continue to increase. "For organizations looking to use artificial intelligence to achieve their business goals, testing is a fantastic place to start. Mobile application testing is a great use case for AI because not only does it offer numerous benefits - including significant time and cost savings as well as quality improvements and risk mitigation - but its impact can be accurately measured," says David Colwell, Vice President of AI and ML at Tricentis.

The importance of quality

The study also highlights the critical importance of mobile application quality to business models, with 87 percent of respondents stating that mobile application quality is critical to their business. Poor mobile application quality, respondents estimated, can cost their organizations up to $2.49 million in lost revenue per year. Prioritizing quality and investing in test automation and AI are therefore not just technological decisions, but also business-critical ones.

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