“Both Apple’s App Store and Google Play were growing consistently all the way up to 2017, when they split,” AppFigures reports. “Google Play continued to grow at a pretty good rate of about 30% to more than 3.6 million apps.”
“Apple’s App Store however, headed in a very different direction. It shrunk,” AppFigures reports. “At the end of 2017 there were roughly 2.1 million iOS apps available in the App Store, a decrease of 5% when compared to the 2.2 million apps that were available in the beginning of the year.”
AppFigures reports, “The decline is a result of stricter enforcement of Apple’s review guidelines, as well as a technical change that eliminated many old apps that were not updated to support 64-bit architecture.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Buh-bye, 32-bit apps!
SEE ALSO:
32-bit Games ‘Plants vs Zombies’, ‘Peggle Classic’, and ‘Solitaire Blitz’ disappear from Apple’s App Store – August 18, 2017
Apple’s brilliant move: Apple’s iOS sheds its 32-bit legacy this fall – August 18, 2017
Apple: High Sierra will be last macOS release to support 32-bit apps ‘without compromise’ – June 29, 2017
iPhone gamers, brace yourselves for the app-ocalypse: Apple’s coming iOS will kill off some beloved games – July 24, 2017
Apple unveils all-new App Store – June 5, 2017
Apple’s App Store downloads surge – June 1, 2017
Apple announces global developer App Store earnings top $70 billion – June 1, 2017
Great news given i prefer quality over quantity, and it is great to see Apple getting rid of unnecessary apps. Never used google store and not familiar with it but i have no doubt many of the google store apps are infected with virus and trojans. What i would like to know is how much is the profit difference between Apple and google store, now that would be revealing
It’s still a mind blowingly large number of apps. I have no idea how many of them make any money at all.
32 bit apps should be upgraded by Apple to 64 bit… The loss by customers who depended on them are huge. Luckily older devices are not hard to come by but it would be nice to have the new devices do what the old ones can to some point… Or maybe let somebody develop an app simulator where you could run these apps…
Are you suggesting Apple should spend resources upgrading apps which have been abandoned by their developers, some of whom have actually gone out of business? I have a hard time understanding why any retailer would take it upon themselves to update a product which is essentially no longer being manufactured by its creator.
Victor, what you are proposing is *extremely difficult* (if not virtually impossible) without the original developer’s source code. In many cases very old apps that have been abandoned by their developer were done so because they got downloaded by users extremely few times (a dozen time by family and friends just to see what it was).
Why would Apple spend *any* resources resurrecting those apps? They shouldn’t.
The fact Google has many, many of these abandoned apps in their store that ridiculously inflate their app number just makes idiot reporters make stupid statements, and the gullible fixate on those statements.
Analysts and writers seem to attach undue importance to big numbers. You only need to glance at the app store to see that it’s overrun with worthless apps and apps which are variants of other apps. It’s very beneficial that Apple weeds out the dross so that customers stand a better chance of finding something worthwhile.
Even after thinning out, there are still over two million apps available. That sounds at least twice as many as there ought to be.
I’d much rather have the opportunity to buy from one hundred thousand apps which are checked to ensure no security threats and which will run on the current operating system than to have three million random apps in a free for all with no checks.
If anything, Apple should be being even more strict and only allow apps which are of a certain standard. If a new app starts getting a lot of negative reviews, it should trigger a period of probation where if significant improvements don’t materialise, it will be dropped from the app store.
very well said and agree about the chaff needed to be separated from the wheat. Also the 2million + apps in the app store is a lot, culling many of the dormant and unnecessary apps would be a great step for apple to take.
Apple could do a much better job helping the user separate the wheat from the chaff. Painfully poor search and filter.
Discovery of new apps is awful in the app stores for mac OS and iOS.
The author is factually incorrect as well. There have been other times when Apple’s App Store has shrunk as well when Apple has purged old non-performing, non-downloaded, abandoned apps. I believe even the Google Play Store has done so.