The number of apps remaining in the App Store has hit a seven-year low as the cleanup of abandoned apps continues. the latest data from Finbold shows the number of apps in the App Store at 1,642,759, down 24.79 percent since the second quarter of 2022. The last time the number of apps was this low was in the third quarter of 2015, at 1,672,271.
In the third quarter, app removal efforts kept Apple in second place in the total number of apps in the store. Google’s Play Store led the way with 3,553,050 apps, while Amazon was far behind in third place with 483,328 apps.
However, the decline in app numbers is part of Apple’s plan and should not be taken as a sign that the app store is failing.
Back in April 2022, Apple sent a notice to developers that it would begin pulling apps from the App Store that hadn’t been updated in “a significant amount of time.
In the second quarter of 2022, Apple removed 439,000 apps due to a lack of updates over the years. Of the apps Apple took down, 64 percent had not received a software update for at least two years or more.
Finbold sees a correlation between the decline in apps and the App Store’s lower revenue in the most recent quarter. Although Apple did not list figures for its services business, the analyst attributed the lower App Store revenue to games, not app removals.
Erik Woodring, an analyst at investment firm Morgan Stanley, reported that Apple customers may be spending less on soft goods such as software due to inflation and other economic issues. Revenue from games is said to have fallen 14 percent and 5 percent overall, the largest since Morgan Stanley began tracking the data in 2015.
The removal of apps from the App Store will not affect apps already downloaded to users’ devices, and features such as in-app purchases will continue to function. The updated requirements apply only to the App Store listings themselves.
