Context. With the rapid development of mobile devices, mobile applications have occupied an increasingly large market. Software testing is an important factor in ensuring software quality [59]. In order to develop high-quality mobile applications, software companies are increasingly paying attention to mobile application testing. We found that there are relatively few studies on mobile application testing methods and tools in the real industry, and this direction of research has been very helpful for some software companies' mobile application testing, so we chose this direction for exploratory research. Objectives. The purpose of our research is to investigate the software company's field of mobile application testing. We mainly study the methods and tools of mobile application testing that are now popular in enterprises, the challenges faced by mobile application testing in software companies and how they solve challenges. Method. We used two methods to answer our research questions. We chose literature review and survey as research methods. The literature review method gives us an insight into the areas of expertise and mobile testing. Survey is used to answer our research questions. Our data collection method is the questionnaire survey method. When we completed the data collection, we performed statistics and analysis on the data and answered our research questions. Result. Through the literature review method, we summarize the methods and tools for mobile application testing in the literature. By sending 46 surveys to different software companies, we analyzed and analyzed the methods and tools for mobile application testing that are popular in the enterprise and the reasons for choosing these methods. We also listed the company's mobile application testing. Challenges and solutions encountered. Conclusions. We answered all the research questions. We analyzed the feedback from 46 questionnaires and got information about mobile application testing. We read a lot of literature and summarized the relevant conclusions in the literature. Our findings can help people in related fields, and we can provide them with 46 data and analysis results. We can also provide mobile application methods and tools that are popular among readers in the enterprise.

Context. With the rapid development of the software industry, innovative software products become the mainstream of the software market. Because software startups can use a few resources to quickly produce and publish innovative software products, more and more software startups are launched. Software testing is important to ensure the quality of product in software companies. Software testing is costly in software development, but if software testing is avoided, it could be costlier. Many different regular software companies spend up to 40-50% of development efforts on software testing [1] [2]. Compared with other regular software companies, time and money are finite and need to be allocated reasonably in software startups. Unreasonable allocation of time and money could lead to the failure of software startups. We don’t know how much software startups spend for testing, and few research studies have investigated the testing practices in software startups. Therefore, we decided to conduct an exploratory study to know about the testing practices in software startups. Objectives. The aim of the research is to investigate testing practices in software startups. In this study, we investigate software startups’ structure and how to manage their test team. The test processes and test techniques used in software startups have been researched. And the main testing challenges in software startups have been investigated as well. Methods. We mainly conducted a qualitative research for the study. We selected literature review and survey as the research method. The literature review method is used to get in-depth understanding of software testing practices in software companies. Survey is used to answer our research questions. We used interview as our data collection method. And in order to analyze data from interviews, we selected descriptive statistics method. Results. A total of 13 responses were obtained through interviews from 9 software startups. We got results from 9 investigated software startups to structure and manage their test teams. We analyzed the common steps of test processes and classified the techniques they used in the 9 software startups. At last, we analyzed and listed the main testing challenges that are occurred in the 9 software startups. Conclusions. The research objectives are fulfilled. The research questions have been answered. We got the conclusion based on 9 software startups. The 9 companies cannot represent all software startups, but we can know about test practices in software startups initially through the 13 interviews. We also found some differences about testing practice between 9 software startups and regular software companies. Our study is a primary research to explore testing practices in 9 software startups, we provided some data and analysis results of the 9 companies to the researchers who want to research some related area. In addition, our research could help someone who plans to set up a software company. They can use the data we collected to think about the testing practice in their own company. Then find out the best way to prevent and resolve the problem in testing.