The App Store is booming again, and AI may be why
Everyone said AI would kill apps. Instead, new app launches are soaring. According to a new analysis from market intelligence providerAppfigures, worldwide app releases in the first quarter of 2026 were up 60% year-over-year across both Apple’s App Store and Google Play. That percentage was an even higher 80% when looking at the iOS App Store alone. In April 2026 so far, the total number of app releases is up 104% across both stores compared to the same time last year, and up 89% on iOS. As Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, quipped Ina recent interview: rumors of the App Store’s death in the AI age “may have been greatly exaggerated.” These findings come amid concerns that the rise of AI chatbots and agents would ultimately see users turning away from apps — a theory that’s already being floated by those in the industry,like Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who is focused on building a smartphone for the AI era.The New York Timesalso reported last year on the potential for new computing platforms to eclipse the smartphone, like smart glasses, ambient computing devices, or reimagined smartwatches with AI features. OpenAI is evenworking on an AI hardware devicewith famed Apple designer Jony Ive. But there’s another possibility, too: AI will make it easier for anyone to create apps, driving a rebirth of the App Store. The new app gold rush could be led by creators who have ideas but not the technical skills to design mobile software. Appfigures’ data indicates that certain categories of apps are seeing more new releases than others. Mobile games still account for most of the new app releases worldwide as of Q1 2026, as they have in prior years. But “productivity” apps have moved into the top five this year. The “utilities” category has also moved up to the number two slot, and the “lifestyle” apps category moved up from the No. 5 slot last year to now No. 3. Finally, “health and fitness”-style applications rounded out the top five categories. The working hypothesis here is that AI-powered tools, like Claude Code or Replit, could be behind the surge of new launches. It also seems possible that we’re hitting some sort of tipping point in terms of AI usability, where it’s easy enough for people to leverage these tools to build their own desired mobile apps more quickly — or even build their first apps ever. The explosion of new apps for Apple to review could also be behind some of the tech giant’s recent missteps. This week,Apple pulled the rewards app Freecash from the App Storefor rules violations, after letting the app climb the store’s Top Charts and sit in the top five for months. Apple was also caught off guard by a malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of Ledger Live, thatdrained $9.5 million in cryptofrom victims’ accounts. While high-profile problems like this can generate bad PR for the App Store, the company still does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of blocking and rejecting dangerous or spammy apps. Apple’smost recent analysis from 2024said the company had removed or rejected more than 17,000 apps for bait-and-switch violations that year; rejected more than 320,000 app submissions that were found to be spam, copying other apps, or misleading; and took action to prevent more than 37,000 potentially fraudulent apps from reaching users on the App Store. Still, Apple pundits like John Gruber havelong arguedthat the App Storeneedsa “bunco squad” of sorts that watches for scammy or fraudulent apps that are gaining in popularity or high-grossing. If AI-assisted vibe coding turns out to be behind the recent surge of app releases, that need will only grow as more new apps flood the marketplace, not all of which will be benign.
