Topics of Concern: Identifying User Issues in Reviews of IoT Apps and Devices

Abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) systems are bundles of networked sensors and actuators that are deployed in an environment and act upon the sensory data that they receive. These systems, especially consumer electronics, have two main cooperating components: a device and a mobile app. The unique combination of hardware and software in IoT systems presents challenges that are lesser known to mainstream software developers. They might require innovative solutions to support the development and integration of such systems. In this paper, we analyze more than 90,000 reviews of ten IoT devices and their corresponding apps and extract the issues that users encountered while using these systems. Our results indicate that issues with connectivity, timing, and updates are particularly prevalent in the reviews. Our results call for a new software-hardware development framework to assist the development of reliable IoT systems.