During the last few decades, the number of patents in information and communication technologies has increased considerably. An increasing number of patents and the associated fragmentation of IP rights have generated a series of potentially problematic consequences. Patent thickets, royalty...

This paper focuses on a specific strategy that developers of mobile applications may use to stimulate demand: the release of updates. We start with a stylised theoretical analysis to describe the developer's decision to release an update. Its predictions are then tested by using an unbalanced...

Apple iOS is a closed platform;Google Android is open. In this paper,we combine data on iOS and Android tablet sales with data on the top 1000 mobile applications from both platforms for five European countries and estimate a structural demand model.We find that the quality of applications...