  When smartphones, applications (a.k.a, apps), and app stores have been widely
adopted by the billions, an interesting debate emerges: whether and to what
extent do device models influence the behaviors of their users? The answer to
this question is critical to almost every stakeholder in the smartphone app
ecosystem, including app store operators, developers, end-users, and network
providers. To approach this question, we collect a longitudinal data set of app
usage through a leading Android app store in China, called Wandoujia. The data
set covers the detailed behavioral profiles of 0.7 million (761,262) unique
users who use 500 popular types of Android devices and about 0.2 million
(228,144) apps, including their app management activities, daily network access
time, and network traffic of apps. We present a comprehensive study on
investigating how the choices of device models affect user behaviors such as
the adoption of app stores, app selection and abandonment, data plan usage,
online time length, the tendency to use paid/free apps, and the preferences to
choosing competing apps. Some significant correlations between device models
and app usage are derived, leading to important findings on the various user
behaviors. For example, users owning different device models have a substantial
diversity of selecting competing apps, and users owning lower-end devices spend
more money to purchase apps and spend more time under cellular network.
