Mobile applications (apps) are increasingly used in managing various tasks in daily life. The presence of documentation and analysis functions reduced the usability score significantly by 0.36 and 0.21 points.Ĭompared to early mobile phones, today’s smartphones and tablet PCs offer a considerably wider range of functionalities. The number of functions was significantly negative correlated with usability. Of the 66 apps, 48 (72.7%) offered the ability to read the screen content aloud. On average, apps were rated best regarding the criterion “comprehensibility” (4.0 out of 5.0), while showing a lack of “fault tolerance” (2.8 out of 5.0).

We evaluated 66 apps within the usability evaluation. Only 30 (4.6%) of the 656 available diabetes apps offered an interface to a measurement device. Our analyses indicated no clear differences in the user rating between free and paid apps. The average user rating was 3.6 stars (maximum 5).

The dominating app language was English (85.4%, 560/656), patients represented the main user group (96.0%, 630/656), and the analysis of the costs revealed a trend toward free apps (53.7%, 352/656). In total, we analyzed 656 apps finding that 355 (54.1%) offered just one function and 348 (53.0%) provided a documentation function.