| dc.description.abstract | With the advancing technology, the number of smartphone users is increasing, which in turn leads to a rise in users of application platforms such as Google Play and App Store. For users and app developers, these platforms serve as intermediaries where developers can provide services to users, who can, in turn, obtain the desired services. The platform profits from this arrangement and strives to find a balance between users and developers through pricing decisions to maximize their own profit. Previous academic research has primarily focused on studying the decision differences among platform, advertisers, and app developers, aiming to maximize the overall profit of the platform ecosystem through the analysis of profit functions. In recent years, due to the growing awareness of personal privacy, platform are required to adhere to regulations and impose restrictions on app developers, limiting their access to user data to ensure the protection of users′ personal information.
This paper aims to utilize an economic model to explore the platform′s optimal profit and privacy protection decisions in the context of user data being required to be protected. The study also analyzes the impact of different factors on the platform′s optimal privacy protection decisions through the analysis of profit functions. The research reveals that when the platform owner simultaneously acts as a smartphone brand and does not charge app developers a share of the advertising revenue, they would set the privacy settings to be the most stringent in order to maximize profit. This can explain why applications in App Store proactively ask users for permission to access their data, while Google Play does not. An important finding is that when the revenue sharing exceeds a certain proportion, if the platform owner does not have their own smartphone brand, they would focus on attracting more platform users to maximize profit. However, if the platform owner has their own smartphone brand, they would choose to attract more app developers and advertisers rather than platform users. | en_US |