Everybody stated AI would kill apps. As an alternative, new app launches are hovering.
In response to a brand new evaluation from market intelligence supplier Appfigures, worldwide app releases within the first quarter of 2026 have been up 60% year-over-year throughout each Apple’s App Retailer and Google Play. That proportion was an excellent increased 80% when trying on the iOS App Retailer alone. In April 2026 to this point, the full variety of app releases is up 104% throughout each shops in comparison with the identical time final 12 months, and up 89% on iOS.
As Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Advertising and marketing, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, quipped In a current interview: rumors of the App Retailer’s dying within the AI age “might have been tremendously exaggerated.”
These findings come amid considerations that the rise of AI chatbots and brokers would in the end see customers turning away from apps — a concept that’s already being floated by these within the business, like Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who is targeted on constructing a smartphone for the AI period. The New York Instances additionally reported final 12 months on the potential for brand spanking new computing platforms to eclipse the smartphone, like good glasses, ambient computing units, or reimagined smartwatches with AI options.
OpenAI is even engaged on an AI {hardware} gadget with famed Apple designer Jony Ive.
However there’s one other risk, too: AI will make it simpler for anybody to create apps, driving a rebirth of the App Retailer. The brand new app gold rush may very well be led by creators who’ve concepts however not the technical abilities to design cell software program.
Appfigures’ knowledge signifies that sure classes of apps are seeing extra new releases than others.
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Cellular video games nonetheless account for a lot of the new app releases worldwide as of Q1 2026, as they’ve in prior years. However “productiveness” apps have moved into the highest 5 this 12 months. The “utilities” class has additionally moved as much as the quantity two slot, and the “way of life” apps class moved up from the No. 5 slot final 12 months to now No. 3. Lastly, “well being and health”-style functions rounded out the highest 5 classes.
The working speculation right here is that AI-powered instruments, like Claude Code or Replit, may very well be behind the surge of latest launches. It additionally appears doable that we’re hitting some type of tipping level when it comes to AI usability, the place it’s straightforward sufficient for folks to leverage these instruments to construct their very own desired cell apps extra rapidly — and even construct their first apps ever.
The explosion of latest apps for Apple to evaluation may be behind a number of the tech large’s current missteps. This week, Apple pulled the rewards app Freecash from the App Retailer for guidelines violations, after letting the app climb the shop’s High Charts and sit within the prime 5 for months. Apple was additionally caught off guard by a malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of Ledger Stay, that drained $9.5 million in crypto from victims’ accounts.
Whereas high-profile issues like this may generate dangerous PR for the App Retailer, the corporate nonetheless does loads of heavy lifting when it comes to blocking and rejecting harmful or spammy apps. Apple’s most up-to-date evaluation from 2024 stated the corporate had eliminated or rejected greater than 17,000 apps for bait-and-switch violations that 12 months; rejected greater than 320,000 app submissions that have been discovered to be spam, copying different apps, or deceptive; and took motion to forestall greater than 37,000 probably fraudulent apps from reaching customers on the App Retailer.
Nonetheless, Apple pundits like John Gruber have lengthy argued that the App Retailer wants a “bunco squad” of types that watches for scammy or fraudulent apps which are gaining in recognition or high-grossing.
If AI-assisted vibe coding seems to be behind the current surge of app releases, that want will solely develop as extra new apps flood {the marketplace}, not all of which might be benign.
