1 March 2023
Close
24 May 2023
14 Minutes Read 
BY
Satya Madhavi Mukku
With digitalization across industry domains, mobile apps form the crust as major business enablers across the world. The latest research data shows that there are 8.93 million mobile apps and roughly around 255 billion mobile app downloads. This whopping mobile app data depicts the importance of mobile apps for various businesses. People use mobile apps for performing various activities such as banking, e-shopping, buying insurance products, booking doctor appointments, obtaining medical advice, paying power bills, etc.
Today, undoubtedly mobile apps continue to be the major business enablers and mobile users tend to use high-quality mobile apps which deliver a seamless user experience and are easy to use. Therefore, businesses should ensure their business-critical mobile apps are high-performing and high-quality by leveraging mobile app test automation to deliver seamless and fully-functional mobile apps.
The process of effectively automating mobile app testing leveraging different open source and commercial test automation tools is broadly what mobile app test automation revolves around. We create and execute automated tests on mobile devices, which significantly saves the testers’ time and reduces overall costs. These automated tests ensure more reliable testing outcomes and ensure fully-functional and high-quality mobile apps. According to GlobeNewswire, the mobile application testing solution market is poised to reach USD 21.5 Billion by 2030, registering a 20.2% CAGR throughout the forecast period (2021–2030).
Mobile apps are the major modes for conducting business for today’s digital businesses such as Healthcare, Banking, Insurance, Fintech, Airlines, and Logistics, to name a few. Businesses need high-performing and quality mobile apps at a faster pace to go-to-market early which is all possible by adopting mobile app test automation.
By leveraging automation, it helps businesses deliver fully-functional mobile apps with seamless performance and security that is bound to increase user engagement, generate more sales and deliver improved user experience (UX). Hence, businesses should ensure their mobile apps are scalable, robust, and seamless in delivering an enhanced UX by leveraging mobile test automation which delivers many benefits to businesses.
Digital businesses get many benefits as they leverage mobile app test automation which has been detailed below:
Therefore, digital businesses need to leverage different types of mobile app test automation methods to get the complete benefits of software test automation which includes:
Mobile test automation execution is a critical process taken up by QA teams and there are some typical challenges the teams tend to encounter. The below sections highlight some of the mobile app test automation challenges and similarly on how to overcome these challenges.
As mobile users tend to access mobile apps with different devices, hence testers should test mobile apps with different screen resolutions which poses a challenge.
Mobile apps are developed for different OS such as Android, iOS, Windows, Safari, etc., Therefore testers should ensure the developed automated tests are compatible across devices, OS, and platforms which is quite challenging for testers while testing.
The mobile apps should support different networks and hence QA teams should ensure the app performs seamlessly across different networks without any issues, which is quite challenging.
While testing, the QA teams may encounter false positives and false negatives that might give rise to flaky tests, which is also another challenge.
The usage of the right test automation strategy forms the key to test automation success and based on the application under test, the proper mobile test automation tool should be selected which is also another important challenge.
Mobile apps should run on any battery for any device without draining the device’s battery. This battery drainage should be tested across devices by testers which is another challenge.
The Android and iOS platforms are highly fragmented, thus making it difficult for the testing teams to create a unified test automation framework.
Testing of multiple user interfaces is also another challenge for testers.
The mobile apps should be tested on real devices but due to their limited availability with teams, testers test them on emulators and simulators which might cause some challenges.
While performing mobile test automation, the QA teams need to adopt the below-stated measures and methods to overcome mobile test automation challenges.
A physical lab along with a cloud-based mobile app testing system will form a robust testing method. In addition, testers should use emulators and simulators to get effective testing results.
It is important to use reliable networks connections along with using a virtual private network (VPN) to overcome network bandwidth and connectivity issues.
It is necessary to create good and effective tests that are compatible with multiple platforms to get accurate results.
QA teams should brainstorm on adopting the right mobile test automation strategy while also selecting the right test automation tool for effective results.
It is essential to test the mobile apps for battery discharges across devices and minimize battery drainage for enabling enhanced UX.
It is necessary to leverage open source frameworks to overcome the above challenge of fragmented platforms as these support multiple platforms.
Use both open source or commercial tools that support multiple platform testing.
As the number of real devices to test is limited for teams, it is suggested to test on simulators and emulators to get.
It is one of the most commonly used open-source mobile test automation tools used for automating tests of native, hybrid, and mobile apps for both iOS and also Android OS.
This tool is used for automating tests for web apps, desktop apps, and mobile apps. Its hybrid object and visual recognition engine provides maximum test coverage.
It is a powerful all-in-one mobile automation tool that powers on Selenium webDriver, and has a record and playback feature that best suits automation. It supports cross-platform testing and supports desktop, web apps, mobile apps, and API testing.
This is an effective tool for testing web, mobile, API, and desktop application test automation. It supports all platforms and OS, regardless of application complexity. This tool also delivers a low-code experience for beginners.
It is a cloud-based test automation tool for automating both web and mobile app testing and supports both code and codeless test automation.
Mobile test automation tools are pre-built and can be used for testing either Android or iOS platforms whereas mobile test automation frameworks are custom-built and can be across multiple platforms. Test automation tools have pre-built features such as recording, playback, reporting, etc. while test automation frameworks need more coding and more maintenance than tools.
It is a keyword-driven mobile automation framework that provides test scripts for mobile applications. It is compatible with iOS and Android platforms and provides remote control of mobile apps.
It has a simple API and powerful integration with the Xamarin cloud and can automate tests and generate detailed reports. It has cross-platform and multi-language support and is used for parallel testing and integrates with DevOps CI/CD.
This framework supports testing of both native and hybrid mobile apps and is easy to write test scripts. It supports multiple versions of Android devices and versions and is easily customizable. It easily integrates with most of the continuous integration tools.
This framework supports multiple devices, emulators, and Android APIs. It is used for native application testing and utilizes Android UI Automator. Selendroid supports integration with other frameworks such as Appium, Cucumber, and Robotium. It supports an intuitive UI to perform test automation.
This is a testing framework developed by Google for creating user interface and functional tests. It is a robust framework that supports easier creation and maintenance of tests with an inbuilt synchronization.
Mobile apps continue to be the major business enablers for businesses across industries. End users need mobile apps that are high-performing, secure, and deliver superior user experience. Businesses should leverage mobile test automation to get high-quality apps and go to market faster.
QA teams tend to encounter some challenges while performing mobile test automation such as OS fragmentations, battery drainage, network bandwidths, and fragmented platforms, to name a few. Thus, testers should use cloud-based mobile test automation platforms, test apps for battery drainage, use reliable networks and VPNs, and leverage open- source platforms to overcome the challenges.
Therefore, businesses to get high-quality mobile apps should leverage mobile test automation to get faster and high-quality releases along with more accurate results.
13 November 2022
21 April 2023
