Smartphone user segmentation based on app usage sequence with neural networks

•Smartphone user segmentation method utilizing app usage sequence is proposed.•We applied a neural network, a variant of the seq2seq architecture, which is suitable for usage sequence.•Segmentation result of our proposed method outperforms all other segmentation methods.•Our method also calculate vector representation of each app effectively. The term user segmentation refers to classifying users into groups depending on their specific needs, characteristics, or behaviors. It is a key element of product development and marketing in many industries, such as the smartphone industry, which employs user segmentation to gather information about usage logs, to produce new products for such specific groups of users. However, previous studies on smartphone user segmentation have been primarily based on demographics and reported usage, which are inherently subjective and prone to skew by the observers and participants. Hamka et al. (2014) was the first to conduct a study, in which smartphone user segmentation was performed using log data collected through smartphone measurements. However, they focused only on network usage and the number of apps used, and not on characteristics or preferences. In this study, we proposed novel ways of segmenting smartphone users based on app usage sequences collected from smartphone logs. We proposed a variant of seq2seq architecture combining the advantages of previous deep neural networks: neural embedding architecture and seq2seq architecture. Furthermore, we compared the user segmentation results of the proposed method with an answer set of segmentation results conducted by domain experts. These experiments demonstrated that the proposed method effectively determines similarities between usage sequences and outperforms existing user segmentation methods.