Trends and Challenges for Software Engineering in the Mobile Domain

Mobile computing is relevant, everywhere, and evolves so fast that it deserves special attention. This article builds on conversations that started during a panel session on “the role of engineering and development in mobile software” held at the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MobileSoft’18). The panel highlighted that mobile computing is not just Android and mobile apps. It touched on the impact of mobile computing on software engineering practices, the problem of forming the mobile software engineering professional, and the transition of research to industry. It also addressed the problems of logical vs. physical mobility and of supporting the “always on” mentality. At the end of the panel we all felt that there was so much more to talk about, that we continued the conversation and summarized our extended discussions in this article.