As per the research more than 45% of companies have admitted that they use some form of mobile app data extraction for competitive analysis and other means.
Yes, in an era where people are glued to their mobile phones to perform various tasks, like online shopping, reading, trading, playing games, and communicating with their contacts, data scraping from mobile apps can give a detailed consumer understanding to businesses.
This data received from scraping can be used to make insightful decisions to stay on the top of the game.
Mobile app scraping can turn out to be a game-changer for your business. Traditional website scraping or public APIs are not as effective and don’t reveal much insights.
On the other hand, businesses can perform mobile app scraping from Android and iOS apps programmatically to gain detailed insights.
This blog refers to mobile app data scraping and a detailed discussion on its methodology and benefits.
What is Mobile App Scraping?
Mobile app scraping is a data extraction process from mobile apps. It is an automated process of accessing and extracting data and information from mobile app’s UI, network traffic, and/or backend APIs. For mobile app scraping, professionals use specialized data scraping tools and scripts for mobile app scraping.
Traditional web scraping efforts were all about targeting static web pages and websites. However, it is not the case with mobile app scraping. Here, organizations need specialized tools to handle mobile-specific data structures, authentication protocol navigation, and reverse engineering of the mobile app.
A survey by experts reveals that over 65% of Fortune 500 companies use scraping tools for competitive analysis and market overview.
By employing mobile app scraping, you can retrieve information such as product details, inventory details, pricing, user reviews, feedback, ratings, behavior analytics, real-time updates, such as news and information.
With a carefully orchestrated mobile app scraping plan, businesses can gain some crucial insights about apps that can be used to further their marketing and product design efforts.
What Are the Fundamentals of Mobile App Scraping?
Remember, mobile app scraping is not just another copy-paste job, it is a much more sophisticated and programmatically performed job where professionals retrieve structured or unstructured data from mobile app ecosystems.
How does a mobile app function? It relies heavily on proprietary APIs communicating via encrypted HTTPS requests to offer dynamic content to users. Data scraping tools target these flows to extract information like user-generated reviews, location-based deals, and personalized feeds.
Mobile app scraping from Android and iOS apps help businesses bridge the gap between app silos and actionable data and insights. However, it totally depends on how precise and accurate data scraping tools are. If not done carefully, businesses can face legal and ethical consequences.
How Mobile App Scraping Works?
A layered toolkit is used to scrap data from mobile applications. The process follows as mentioned below:
- First of all, the app’s network traffic is analyzed to map API endpoints.
- Scraping tools like Charles Proxy or Fiddler intercept requests to reveal JSON structures that are responsible for in-app features of the application.
- Once it is identified, data scraping tools are employed to replay or automate these calls to retrieve bulk data.
Some of the key methods used in mobile app scraping are:
Network Traffic Interception
This is one of the most effective mobile app scraping methods that bring efficiency and accuracy to the table. In this method, scrapers route the app’s traffic through a proxy on a rooted device or emulator to capture raw payloads. If you want data scraping for apps that are dependent heavily on APIs like social media platforms or ecommerce apps, this is an ideal mobile app scraping method.
UI Automation
Another mobile app scraping method that is used to retrieve data rendered client-side. Here, tools like Appium (cross-platform) or UIAutomator (Android) are used to tap, swipe, and scroll to extract on-screen elements. It is a slower process, but very effective and versatile for applications with dynamic user interfaces.
Reverse Engineering and Emulation
In this method, scrapers use different tools like APKTool to decompile APK/IPK files to expose code logic. On the other hand, they also use emulators to run apps in controlled environments for repeated testing.
What Are The Challenges of Mobile App Scraping?
Though it seems easy and kid’s play, mobile app scraping has some challenges as well. However, hiring professional mobile app scraping services can help overcome these challenges. Let’s explore these challenges.
Frequent App Updates:
One of the major concerns of mobile app scraping is that mobile apps are updated frequently. Frequently changing APIs and user interfaces might break scraping scripts.
Security Mechanisms:
Sometimes, mobile apps with robust security make it difficult for scrapers to extract data. Some security features are encryption, multi-layered authentication, and anti-bot protection, which are difficult to work with.
Complex Data Formats:
There is a major difference between website data and mobile data as the later is more dynamic and harder to parse. It might be another challenge for scrapers.
Local legal and ethical laws:
Different countries have different legal and data regulatory laws that must be complied with.
What Are The Benefits of Mobile App Scraping?
There are various benefits of mobile app scraping, like
Competitive Analysis
Businesses can retrieve insightful data about what their competitors are doing. They can know pricing details, product launches, promotions and marketing techniques, and much more.
Market Research
When businesses aggregate data from app reviews, ratings, feedback, and user behavior analytics, they can get valuable market intelligence to further their market research efforts.
Personalization
Offering personalized products and services is a key to win the trust of your audience. With highly insightful feedback data from apps help businesses to design products that offer highly personalized experiences.
Conclusion
Mobile app scraping can help businesses get insightful information to drive innovation in their environments. With highly advanced tools and accurate data scraping methods, mobile app scraping can be highly useful for businesses to understand their competitors, design product and marketing strategies, and implement a 360-degree approach for business. However, one must design and implement a carefully crafted mobile app scraping method to avoid legal and ethical implications.
Ready to unlock the full potential of mobile data? Connect with Diya Infotech to learn how our mobile app data scraping experts can help you extract, analyze, and leverage app data effectively and ethically.
