  Since the beginning of 2020, the novel coronavirus has begun to sweep across
the globe. Given the prevalence of smartphones everywhere, many countries
across continents also developed COVID-19 contract tracing apps that users can
install to get a warning of potential contacts with infected people. Unlike
regular apps that undergo detailed requirement analysis, carefully designed
development, rigorous testing, contact tracing apps were deployed after rapid
development. Therefore such apps may not reach expectations for all end users.
Users share their opinions and experience of the usage of the apps in the app
store. This paper aims to understand the types of topics users discuss in the
reviews of the COVID-19 contact tracing apps across the continents by analyzing
the app reviews. We collected all the reviews of 35 COVID-19 contact tracing
apps developed by 34 countries across the globe. We group the app reviews into
the following geographical regions: Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America,
Africa, Middle East, and Australasia (Australia and NZ). We run topic modeling
on the app reviews of each region. We analyze the produced topics and their
evolution over time by categorizing them into hierarchies and computing the
ratings of reviews related to the topics. While privacy could be a concern with
such apps, we only find privacy-related topics in Australasia, North America,
and Middle East. Topics related to usability and performance of the apps are
prevalent across all regions. Users frequently complained about the lack of
features, user interface and the negative impact of such apps on their mobile
batteries. Still, we also find that many users praised the apps because they
helped them stay aware of the potential danger of getting infected. The finding
of this study is expected to help app developers utilize their resources to
address the reported issues in a prioritized way.
