Platform competition in the tablet PC market: The effect of application quality
In this paper, Thanh Doan (Office of Communications, UK), Fabio M. Manenti (Department of Economics and Management of the University of Padova) and Franco Mariuzzo (University of East Anglia), study the impact of mobile application quality in the tablet PC market. The market is characterized by the presence of two incompatible platforms: Android/Google and iOS/Apple. The authors show that app quality is a determinant of tablet PC demand and that improvements in app quality benefits tablet producers, with larger effects for Android tablet devices. They also show that a policy of levelling up the app quality of the two stores, as if interoperability would be introduced, i) favors the tablet producers of the lowest quality app store (Google) and ii) stimulates the overall adoption of tablet PCs. This generates consumer surplus in tablet demand.
You can read their "International Journal of Industrial Organization" article here