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Number of Apps In App Store Declined For the First Time Last Year (fortune.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the there's-a-first-time-for-everything dept.

According to new data from the analytics company Appfigures, the total number of apps in the App Store declined for the first time last year. "Appfigures notes that just 755,000 apps were released for iOS last year, a 29% drop from 2016," reports Fortune. "In contrast, 1.5 million apps were released for Android last year, marking a 17% year-over-year increase." From the report: Over the course of the year, the number of apps in the store declined from 2.2 million to 2.1 million, marking the first time the store had fewer apps at the end of the year than it did in the beginning. The reason for that change is likely Apple's decision to remove older apps from the store that were not being updated regularly, The Verge notes. Last year, Apple removed apps that were not built on 64-bit architecture, something necessary for them to work on newer iPhone models.

63 comments

  1. Absurd metric by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Quality over quantity, anything else simply encourages stupid things like separate "releases" with nothing but minor cosmetic changes. Even still there were almost 1 million "new" applications.

    1. Re:Absurd metric by geekmux · · Score: 1

      ...Even still there were almost 1 million "new" applications.

      It's more likely there were about 1,000 new applications, along with another 999,000 pieces of useless crap. Quantity over quality still rules king when it comes to app stores.

    2. Re: Absurd metric by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some retarded employers want to see your own app in a store. And we all know that Tim Cock's sheeple code monkeys will happily oblige.

      There are thousands of stupid apps that have nothing but a blank screen with some clickable numbers or letters in thin helvetica font. A monkey can do that in minutes.

      Apple as a company needs some serious overhaul.

    3. Re:Absurd metric by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...Even still there were almost 1 million "new" applications.

      It's more likely there were about 1,000 new applications, along with another 999,000 pieces of useless crap. Quantity over quality still rules king when it comes to app stores.

      Maybe 10 "new" applications at most.

      The rest are useless crap and copies of existing applications.

  2. Airplane by weight by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 2

    What is the use of these numbers? Is there any meaningful conclusion you can take from this? Should I switch to Android because it has more apps in the store. Or should I switch to iOS because there is less old/crap in the store?

    1. Re:Airplane by weight by geekmux · · Score: 1

      What is the use of these numbers? Is there any meaningful conclusion you can take from this? Should I switch to Android because it has more apps in the store. Or should I switch to iOS because there is less old/crap in the store?

      The overwhelming percentage of apps are pointless crap anyway, so these metrics are about as useful as knowing how many emails are caught by your average SPAM filter, regardless of which store you use.

    2. Re:Airplane by weight by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

      What is the use of these numbers?

      I'm guessing that some folks who thought they could get rich easy with a Fart App have thrown in the towel.

      More useful would be some statistics on how many highly popular app there are . . . and how many obvious duds.

      Of course, any statistics are useless when you really need an app for something . . . but can't find it.

      Well, my solution to that is to write it myself. It's really not that difficult. I've written apps for both iOS and Android, and it takes some learning time, but I find that it is fun.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    3. Re: Airplane by weight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong. Even with majority apps being useless crap, the front page will show what apple editors deemed to be popular.
      If they show useless crap front and center - that speaks about apple as a business turning into shit.

    4. Re:Airplane by weight by klingens · · Score: 1

      It's an easy to grasp number for a layman to show "the exponential growth phase of smartphones is now over". The tech is now mature and therefore uninteresting for the purpose of investing to get rich, uninteresting for the purpose of absurdly high share valuation growths of in this case Apple, but others as well.

      Maybe it's not the best number, and maybe people nearer to the industry knew this beforehand, but it's easy to communicate the maturation to Joe Q. Public.

    5. Re: Airplane by weight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      My company threw in the towel when our 4 apps, which took about a year each and are all highly rated, couldn't get visibility amongst the millions of Fart Button Apps.

      You have it all wrong. At least some real developers making quality products are quitting Apple out of frustration. It's 100x more arduous and obnoxious to release on iOS, but less likely to be seen, much less profit.

    6. Re:Airplane by weight by fyzikapan · · Score: 1

      Agreed. It's a useless number.

      So the App Store now has marginally less garbage in it (imperceptibly so) and the play store got 1.5M new pieces of shit. So what?

    7. Re: Airplane by weight by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Did you think about hiring a marketing company?

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    8. Re:Airplane by weight by mjwx · · Score: 1

      What is the use of these numbers? Is there any meaningful conclusion you can take from this? Should I switch to Android because it has more apps in the store. Or should I switch to iOS because there is less old/crap in the store?

      It means the market is now mature and we've reached "peak app".

      This is bad for Apple as they need to keep the illusion that they're constantly growing. Back in reality however companies and organisations are realising they don't all need an app. My Martial Arts school have recently switched from an App (only one of which worked, if the IOS app worked, the Android app was broken and vice versa) to just using a website. Its good because I can book lessons using my computer or phone instead of having to use my phone. For my school, it's cheaper for them and there has been a marked drop in complaints since.

      "Apps" only really came about because smartphones at the time could not handle web pages properly. This hasn't been the case for years (since at least 2010 for Android) and companies are realising that apps are a giant waste of money when they just replicate what you can do on their website.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    9. Re:Airplane by weight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have an app out now that allows the client the book their schedule/availability/appointments/get number of seats left for each day, etc all within the app(in admin mode of course). there is no need to go to your computer for it. super convenient.

  3. Holy App! by mentil · · Score: 1

    755k new apps released in one year? How many apps does one person need?! I have a feeling I will be able to count on one hand how many of those apps I EVER hear about/see anywhere. I wouldn't mind a breakdown for what proportion duplicate the functionality of something 10+ other apps already do, or are shovelware (but I repeat myself).

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Holy App! by sheramil · · Score: 1

      I'd like to see someone install ALL of them on the one phone. It'd either stop dead, or explode.

    2. Re:Holy App! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      How many apps does one person need?!

      One?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Holy App! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      That isn't an app. That is a platform for apps to run on.

    4. Re:Holy App! by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      I'd like to see someone install ALL of them on the one phone. It'd either stop dead, or explode.

      I think you can buy an iPhone with 512GB. If not then probably an iPad. You could probably find 25,000 apps below 20MB each and install them all. I wonder if iOS can handle that (would need a few thousand screens just to display them all).

    5. Re:Holy App! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      who cares about shovelware when apps cost .99 or 1.99 or free? download it, try it out, delete if you don't like it.
      It's like a box chocolate lol...

    6. Re:Holy App! by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Everyone's been convinced that apps are the new gold rush. Everyone wants in. Almost nobody makes any appreciable money from it, unless you're doing this on salary. And the vast majority of apps are nothing more than a sliver of wrappers around a URL that goes to a back office server or an existing web site making them trivial to write (which fuels the gold rush mentality). And for the sorts of apps I want, I can't find any good ones anyway.

      So declining numbers of apps, maybe that's the light at the end of the tunnel?

    7. Re:Holy App! by iamhassi · · Score: 1

      I think you can buy an iPhone with 512GB. If not then probably an iPad. You could probably find 25,000 apps below 20MB each and install them all. I wonder if iOS can handle that (would need a few thousand screens just to display them all).

      Iphone maximum storage has been at 256gb since 2016 with the iPhone 7. Latest iPad Pros can be had with up to 512gb. Iphone has doubled storage every two years since 2008 so this year's iPhone (9? 11? XI?) should have up to 512gb.

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    8. Re:Holy App! by iamhassi · · Score: 1

      As to your second question, if 25,000 smal apps could be installed, the answer is yes. 49,140 is the limit https://www.lifewire.com/how-m...

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
  4. Android Over IOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm a mobile app developer with 9 apps in the Play Store... I refused to put any apps in the Apple Store because of their corrupt policies such as taking %40 of all profits from apps and the limitation of requiring an Apple machine to compile on seems ridiculous to me. Therefore I decided to NEVER release an app under IOS, because this to me seems tyrannically.

    1. Re: Android Over IOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Your" does not mean "you are".

  5. Well, Crapp... by rmdingler · · Score: 1

    Another block in the foundation of civilization crumbles.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Well, Crapp... by Visarga · · Score: 1

      I'm worried that apps, which are like a kind of websites, can be simply removed in large quantity. Crap as they might be, access to them is important for cultural reasons.

    2. Re:Well, Crapp... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      Apple removes large quantities in a simple process. They change the API and mandate 64 bits. Voila! No apps at all less than a few years old will even work on your new Igadget.

    3. Re:Well, Crapp... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Many old games like adventure games from the early 90s etc. were re-issued for iphone/ipad before the iphone 5S even came out. So : are these lost, possibly forever? Do the companies that republished them, if still around, need to negociate the rights again? Did authors of some notable games from the 80s and 90s die?
      If games are reissued as a 64bit version : how long will they be available anyway?

      See, I'd probably like to spend the "big bucks" on an Ipad, buy and play releases of old games (many you can name, check on wikipedia and there's an iOS release. e.g. Myst, even if that's not the greatest game of all time. Wow, there's Riven!)
      If I do this, I won't game on anything else, because I can't/won't want to spend hundreds on every single platform around, thanks.
      But if most of the games, actually bought for money go poof in 5 years that's dubious value. Will copyright licenses expire too, leading to deleted games? (will they censor other games, because there are Russians and nazis and prostitutes in them?)
      Can games be secured for X period of time? If I buy Myst (a 25-year-old game, that I might only play in a while, and which I might or might not ever be able to finish) I would like for it to last 20 years, or 35 years, not 3 or 5.

    4. Re:Well, Crapp... by swb · · Score: 1

      I think it's just annoying that you lose access to what had been a working app. I don't quite understand why Apple had to force 64 bit compatibility. I suspect a lot of it had something to do with just a technical excuse to purge old apps.

    5. Re:Well, Crapp... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is why the Android ecosystem is better. Apps can be downloaded as APKs, APKs can be backed up before a new version is installed. There is an app that automates this. Every time google play updates an app it will make a copy of the old APK in an archive folder. A couple taps to the security settings lets you install these now "untrusted" apps. There have been many times an app was updated and the update was total garbage. Just goto google play, uninstall the app. Then goto the archive folder and reinstall whatever older version you want.

      From time to time i dump all these APKs in the archive to storage on my NAS. I literally have years worth of older versions of many of the popular apps.

      There are also sites like https://www.apkmirror.com/ that have back catalogs of older versions of apps. Can't do that with the apple ecosystem!

    6. Re: Well, Crapp... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then fire up Windows 98 or DOS 2.0.

  6. If I got this right... by sanf780 · · Score: 1
    Number of apps on iTunes market place has been reduced as a lot of legacy stuff being taken out. These apps, ahem computer applications running on a phone, are not being supported anymore. These applications are probably targeting older iOS versions and older phone architectures such that these application may not work anymore on recent phones.

    Google did not have to do that. As such, the reported number of applications on Google Play marketplace has increased.

    Nothing else to see, keep moving. And keep installing useless applications.

  7. The only metric that counts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is profit. If you write apps for iOS you make money. Apple makes money for itself and those who support it. Writing apps for Android is a losing proposition.

    1. Re:The only metric that counts by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      So you are saying that the only metric for end users is how much money they can give developers?

    2. Re:The only metric that counts by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      If you like straw men, sure.

  8. Oh no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now how am I supposed to download a flashlight that takes megabytes of code to turn on a LED and send my personal data to China??

    1. Re:Oh no! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      On my Galaxy J3, there is a flashlight function built right into the OS.

    2. Re:Oh no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On a Windows 10 laptop I put a white background. It can light up the room a tiny bit!, but mainly the OS is very bloated and the laptop only has 4GB RAM (but the fastest CPU I ever used on any computer), with HDD. So as a bid to save on RAM, I disabled the background picture, and desktop icons, and trimmed down the taskbar and quit some useless software in the icon tray. I was swapping enough to interrupt video playback, at some point.
      Lacking admin rights, there's 100MB of useless software that I can't disable (Search indexer, OEM-ware and some worthless thing)
      Also "0.1 GB" I would claim back if I could disable the Intel GPU.

      I don't even trust smartphones yet! Have a Galaxy J5, but it doesn't show me the desktop (whatever you call it) without first letting it connect to the Internet. I don't want it to be "registered" to Samsung with serial and fingerprint numbers etc. tied to the wifi network/WAN connection I'm on. Like Warren Buffet only wants to do things he understands, I guess.

    3. Re: Oh no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if the manufacturer doesn't officially support it, it's likely that your laptop supports 8 gb of ram. Most of the 64 bit Win10 laptops, if the memory is socketed, you can pull and replace the 4gb with an 8. Which is a real boost. Search online forums for your laptop model to see what others have tried.

    4. Re: Oh no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, thanks.
      It supports 32GB RAM. It's just that the RAM is expensive in a way that earlier laptops in the same range had 8GB out of the box, or perhaps 6GB which was an option with DDR3 but not with DDR4.
      It's funny that I get into swap hell running one browser.
      As another person uses the laptop i.e. for once I'm not the owner, I didn't wipe the OS. I think Lubuntu 18.04 beta 2 would be a nice fit. Just search indexer and Antimalware Service Executable add up to 100MB RAM, which would be enough to run an entire desktop OS.

  9. I prefer my own apps. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I prefer using my own apps. They are free, have no paid features, protect my privacy and I can modify them in whichever way I like.

  10. Re:If I got this right...aaaaaand you dont. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google does the same thing simply by deprecating the old API's. The apps stay in the play store for compatibility with the older versions of Android, but they won't run on newer versions of Android at all.

  11. Good by jimprdx · · Score: 0

    Why is this presented as being bad? There's a question of quality over quantity, the move to 64-bit has cleared out ancient crap. I doubt that there are more than a few thousand apps which are not completely worthless, 2 million is insane.

    1. Re: Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The summary at the top is ambiguous. The text describes the number of new apps each year, but the title talks about total number of apps. If you go by the text, it sounds like fewer new apps. Given that apps need to be 64 bit it follows that there will be vastly fewer apps in the store, since all the old ones cease to run, if fewer new apps are coming out.

    2. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is this presented as being bad? There's a question of quality over quantity, the move to 64-bit has cleared out ancient crap. I doubt that there are more than a few thousand apps which are not completely worthless, 2 million is insane.

      I have yet to see one app that isn't worthless. It's a whole app store of nothing but garbage nobody needs.

  12. Spam apps created programatically by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    is my guess. I remember Blackberry touting their vibrant app store until somebody pointed out that one company was responsible for most of the apps and was generating them with some kind of script (there were tens of thousands of them).

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  13. False info by Ecuador · · Score: 1

    I have no idea what you are talking about. Apple takes 30% not 40, which may be steep, but AFAIK it is exactly the same as Google. Also, you can compile on a Hackintosh, or a Hackintosh Virtual Machine, so the hardware does not have to be Apple (although that saves you a lot of trouble), but it is indeed annoying that you definitely need OS X at a very recent version otherwise the Xcode version needed won't run.
    Overall, I dislike the limitations that iOS apps have, that is why my every day phone is Android (Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 currently), however, I have an iPhone from work and I find iOS development a joy compared to Android, so the apps I develop for fun are on iOS.
    I would very very much have liked for something like the Maemo/Meego (Nokia N9) to have been given a chance, as it is both Android and iPhone are sort of "necessary evils" for me for different reasons.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:False info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, it is illegal to develop an IOS App with a Hackintosh and even in a VM! It is supposed to be a full fledged Apple Product or you are in violation of their ToS. Not saying it can't be done, but this is a huge inconvenience and for a VM, I would have to run OSX on top of an OS that I can already program on for Android. This is not only an inconvenience but also inefficient as I would be using more RAM and CPU usage. Also, the ad revenue taken from Google has switched from 70/30 to 85/15 which is much better than Apple. There are multiple clear reasons why Google's App store is doing better than Apple's, but we don't need to go into every reason. I also find Android App Development to be easier and more intuitive than IOS development, which is in contrast to what you imply, but the issue is relative because Cordova can be used to develop both in Javascript. To develop for IOS under Cordova though, I still need XCode and OSX when Android can be developed on Linux, Windows and Mac separately with Android Studio installed.

    2. Re:False info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google is 85/15 for subscriptions and while I don't do iOS, I remember reading Apple did something similar.

    3. Re:False info by tepples · · Score: 1

      How much revenue (after Google's 30% cut) do you have per user, and how many users do you anticipate on iOS? If the product of the two exceeds $600, buy a Mac mini and VNC into it for compiles.

  14. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  15. App appers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where is he, you luddite app appers need him to here to stop the apping.

  16. This is why I like iPhone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I started using smartphone in 2008. Since then, I have used iPhone half of the time and used Android+Windows for the rest. My personal experience with iPhone is far superior to that of Android. The quality of app is much better and privacy settings are much better as well. Even now, in my family, 2 of the 4 phones are iPhone 5S which were made in 2013 and they are going strong. So overall cost of ownership is not high compared to Android phones.

  17. Not to mention Android is Linux. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All of the other software in Linux.

    Mac/walled-garden still sucks unless you need some exorbitant software for graphics/music editing without starting from scratch teaching FreeBSD to a user.

    Just use FreeBSD it's way better than Apple.

  18. This is why I like Android by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I started using smartphone in 2008. Since then, I have used iPhone half of the time and used Android+Windows for the rest. My personal experience with Android is far superior to that of iPhone. The quality of app is much better and privacy settings are much better as well. Even now, in my family, 2 of the 4 phones are Samsungs which were made in 2013 and they are going strong. So overall cost of ownership is not high compared to iPhones.

  19. ASLR is stronger on 64-bit by tepples · · Score: 1

    A 64-bit system is less vulnerable to return-oriented programming exploits because address space layout randomization (ASLR) increases return address entropy to a greater extent on 64-bit systems than on 32-bit systems. In addition, having both 32-bit libraries and 64-bit libraries loaded uses valuable RAM, and having one 32-bit application running in the background means you have to have both libraries loaded.

  20. Programs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please use the correct term,"Programs".

  21. Yes, You r right by andersonemily079 · · Score: 1

    It depends on your apps, App store guidelines are updated recently.. view here amazing app : http://bit.ly/5-Free-GIF-Maker...