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Software Apple Technology

Number of Apps In App Store Declined For the First Time Last Year (fortune.com) 63

Posted by BeauHD 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.
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Number of Apps In App Store Declined For the First Time Last Year More

Number of Apps In App Store Declined For the First Time Last Year

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  • Airplane by weight (Score:3)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Saturday April 07, 2018 @05:11AM (#56397033) Homepage

    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?

    • 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.

    • 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.

      • Re: Airplane by weight (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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.

    • 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.

    • 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?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      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

  • 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).

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

      • 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).

        • 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.

        • 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... [lifewire.com]

    • How many apps does one person need?!

      One? [gnu.org]

    • 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).

    • 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

  • Android Over IOS (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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.

    • 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

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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 muc

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          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.

  • Another block in the foundation of civilization crumbles.
    • 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.

      • 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.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          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 nam

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        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.

        • 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.

  • 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 insta

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

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