Apple is removing 2.3 million apps from the App Store — here’s why
Apple has removed no less than 2.3 million apps from the App Store, leaving ‘only’ 1.8 million. But why did Apple do that?
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Apple removes 2.3 million apps
A few weeks before the WWDC 2023, Apple shares some interesting figures about the App Store. These figures show that since 2020, Apple has removed a whopping 2.3 million apps from the Store.
Now there are a total of 1.8 million apps available in the digital store. So the choice is still huge, but more than half of the available applications have been removed in recent years.
According to Apple, this is for several reasons. The main reason is that many apps no longer received updates, making them unusable. This happens more often when apps become obsolete and developers release a new app. A recent example of this is the new app from Videoland, the old app is then thrown out of the App Store after a while.
Read also: New App Store prices: apps will soon be available for 10,000 euros
In addition, many apps no longer worked with the latest version of iOS. Every year, Apple releases a major iOS update, forcing developers to adjust their apps. In some cases this does not happen. As a result, Apple is forced to remove the apps from the App Store.
App Store started with only 500 applications
Apple also shared how many apps the App Store started with in 2008: there were only 500 apps to download at the time. These were apps from external developers, because Apple’s own apps are not counted. The number of apps from Apple itself is also on the low side, Apple currently offers about 60 apps in the App Store.
The number of apps in the Store has increased considerably over the past 15 years. And that can be seen in the profit that is made, because so far developers have made a total of $ 320 million from the Store.
It is striking that the total profit in 2019 was still 120 billion dollars. So in the pandemic, developers have made $ 200 billion profit from applications in the App Store.
Many more apps can be downloaded from iOS 17
It is expected that downloading apps will change this year with the arrival of iOS 17. In iOS 17 it will then be possible to download apps that are not in the App Store, but come from another online App Store. This is also called ‘sideloading‘ named. At the moment it is almost only possible to install apps from the App Store.
Read also: iPhone will get a new App Store in 2024 (but not from Apple)
With this new way of downloading apps, app developers no longer have to hand over a percentage of their income to Apple. Normally, developers have to pay to get their apps on the App Store. This new function is only coming to Europe for the time being, so we will soon have a choice of many more apps.
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