The last few years have witnessed a significant increase in the frequency and magnitude of involving third-party application developers in software platforms. While this involvement offers great opportunities in building and sustaining platform innovation, it also exposes platform owners to significant challenges. Typically, platform owners facilitate the involvement of third-party developers by providing resources, referred to in this thesis as boundary resources, that give access to the platform, shift design capability, and facilitate the use of the platform’s core technologies. At the same time, these resources have the potential to be used to maintain platform control. This involves seemingly conflicting goals that creates a challenge for platform owners in finding the right balance. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate and understand the role of boundary resources in platform owners’ efforts to stimulate third-party development. To this end, this thesis proposes a theoretical model of boundary resources. This model centres on various drivers behind boundary resources design and use, and how these drivers interact in third-party development. The thesis also presents a comprehensive view of governance and strategizing practices used by platform owners through boundary resources. This thesis comprises a cover and a collection of five published research papers. The thesis applies a qualitative research method and employs multiple case studies. Boundary resources, innovation networks and platform governance perspectives have been synthesized to build a theoretical  basis to analyze the empirical findings. This thesis complements and extends the literature on software platforms, and the insights derived from the thesis enhance previous research on third-party development. In addition, it provides a focused theoretical account of the interfaces between platform owners and third-party developers that contributes to the body of knowledge developed around using tools for innovation.

Information Technology (IT) evolution in the recent decades has been able to grow the mobility of the end-user. A contributing factor has impacted and improved the smartphone area. This, in turn, has changed end-users’ expectations and experiences in the recent years in terms of available services, which have made mobile applications (apps) to find their place in daily life. In line with the significant growth of smartphones, as the iPhone and Android phones, is also the development of mobile applications exploded. Mobile use has - with this - fundamentally changed and much of what customers used to do on the computer, they do now on their mobile. It makes of course requires that third-parties have a mobile presence and correct utilization, this new arena enormous business opportunities. Hence, as mobile devices become a more visible business tool, it becomes important for organizations to develop applications to meet customer needs and stay competitive. Third-party development is relevantly in the core of software development nowadays. The introduction of smartphones and tablet devices, the associated products, and services in the form of apps has significantly changed software developments practices for developers. The aim of this research formulated to study the development process and practices associated with third-parties and their effects on dealing with various mobile platforms and boundary resources (SKDs and APIs). Qualitative study and exploratory design are extensively conducted for data collection and analysis. Primary data is gathered based on experiences, opinions, and insights from the experts in the subject, and secondary data is gathered from literature, which constantly supports the primary data and ensures the research credibility. The main contribution and results of this study are the factors and development process that third-party developers take into consideration when developing apps for iOS and Android such as ecosystem, programing language, platform, programing model, tools, development process model, supply chain, and submission apps. The success of the digital ecosystems and platform knowledge adopted by Apple and Google has gained a lot of attention from developers in the last years concerning mobile application development. This, in turn, was the key factor of their success at the smartphones market and the portal for developers from all the world.

Ericssons Business Communication Suite (BCS) är en Unified Communication-lösning, och är avsedd för större företag och teleoperatörer. BCS erbjuder tjänster som snabbmeddelanden, videosamtal, lägga till kontakter i grupper samt grupphantering mm. Syftet med detta projekt var tvåfaldigt; att utveckla och integrera ett program som kan kommunicera med Ericssons BCS, samt att dokumentera denna integration genom de erhållna kunskaperna från utvecklingen. Applikationen utvecklades för Windows Sidebar widget miljön och BCS miljön simulerades med hjälp av flera program och applikationer som tillhandahölls av Ericsson. Det första resultatet är en steg-för-steg integrationsguide, som innehåller installationsintruktioner för BCS-miljön samt riktlinjer för denna integration. Det andra resultatet är en widget som kan söka efter personer på sökmotorn www.eniro.se och utnyttja tjänster som tillhandahålls från BCS, som kontakt-och grupphantering samt videosamtal. Detta projekt visar att en tredjepartsutvecklad applikation kan integreras med BCS, och att tredjepartsutvecklare samt anställda på Ericsson kan använda steg-för-steg integrationsguiden för att sätta upp test- och utvecklingsmiljö för BCS. / Ericsson Business Communication Suite (BCS) is a Unified Communication solution destined for larger companies and telecommunication operators. BCS offers services such as instant messaging, video calls, contact group management and much more. The purpose of this project was twofold; developing and integrating an application that could communicate with Ericsson's Business Communication Suite, but also to document this integration through the knowledge acquired from the development. The application was developed for the Windows Sidebar widget engine and a BCS environment was simulated with the help of several programs and applications provided by Ericsson. The results of the project are a step-by-step integration guide, which contains environment setup as well as integration guidelines, and also a widget application that can search for people on the search engine www.eniro.se and utilize services provided by BCS such as contact and group management and video calls. This project demonstrates that a third party developed application can be integrated with Ericsson BCS, and that third party developers and people at Ericsson can use the step-by-step integration guide to easily setup the necessary BCS test environments.