Let’s take a look at each of the above terms individually.
Mobile: A device small enough to fit in the palm of your hand but smart enough to carry your whole world within and the one that has managed to revolutionize human communications.
Application (Mobile Application): a term used to describe Internet applications that run on smartphones and other mobile devices
Automation: The automatic operation or control of equipment, process or system.
Testing (Software Testing): An investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service
All the four terms above are an industry by themselves. However, in spite of that, when put together as a phrase, it fails to gather the momentum and importance that actually it should. So, why does this happen?
This happens mainly because of lack of understanding of the potential of the same. Traditional software testers tend to overlook the mobile device and mobile applications considering them as a second fiddle to personal computers. However, that is not the case. Today there are more mobile devices in the world than there are human beings. There are at least 10 times the number of mobile application downloads than there are people on this earth. Going by that simple mathematics, there are 10 mobile applications downloads for every human on this planet. That is a phenomenal number.
Traditional testers go by the theory that smaller the screen and size, smaller the features and powers. Today, across different industry verticals, almost 30% of the businesses are done over mobile applications. Hence it would be a step in the completely wrong direction to ignore the requirements of mobile applications and mobile application testing.
So now, let’s take a look at the famous Ws for Mobile Application Automation Testing
WHY?
Perhaps, the most important question for this discussion is Why mobile application automation testing is required or important? The simple answer is that it is required to break the testing paradigm of ‘One Size Fits All’. With mobiles and mobile application testing, this statement is far from truth. I would like to say that the mobile industry is getting into its Troubled Teenage years. Over the last three years, there have been more mobile operating systems version releases than Microsoft has made Windows release in its lifetime. Every quarter, you see a new major device being launched into the market. The customer loyalties are no longer existent. The customer is likely to change mobile devices twice every year. If your application fails to run correctly on a device, irrespective of the fault bearer, the not-so-geeky customer is only going to blame your application. To keep pace with the fast moving industry, continuous QA is not only required, but is inevitable. As a QA manager you could create an “assembly chain” of manual testers who keep testing your application day in and out or invest in a comprehensive and robust automation strategy. The choice is obvious.
