Apple Gets Ready to Eliminate Almost 30% of Apps in the App Store

Ariel Ariel
4/29/22

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #111 - They're All Talking About It!. Check out the full article for more insights.


News emerged last week that Apple has been emailing developers who haven't updated their apps in over two years and threatening with removal if the apps aren't updated in the next 30 days.

I was curious how many apps and games could disappear next month, so I used Explorer to see how many apps in the App Store haven't been updated in over two years.

The short answer is a lot!

The more precise answer is 752,412. That's right, Apple is threatening to remove almost a million apps from App Store. Explorer shows these apps come from 260,000 unique developers. That's a lot of emails!

There are 2,126,366 apps and games in the App Store right, now which means Apple could be eliminating 35% of apps in a few days.

Who's going to take the hit? Digging a bit deeper with Explorer, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the largest category to get hit is games, which make up roughly 20% of all offending apps. Education, Business, Utilities, and Lifestyle round out the top 5.

Will Apple actually delete so many apps? It won't be the first time. Over the last few years, Apple has quietly groomed the App Store, eliminating hundreds of thousands of apps that are no longer up to snuff, so this is totally plausible.

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.

Tagged: #business # apple

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