Everybody mentioned AI would kill apps. As an alternative, new app launches are hovering.
In accordance with a brand new evaluation from market intelligence supplier Appfigures, worldwide app releases within the first quarter of 2026 had been up 60% year-over-year throughout each Apple’s App Retailer and Google Play. That share was an excellent increased 80% when trying on the iOS App Retailer alone. In April 2026 to date, 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, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, quipped In a current interview: rumors of the App Retailer’s demise within the AI age “could have been drastically exaggerated.”
These findings come amid issues that the rise of AI chatbots and brokers would finally see customers turning away from apps — a principle that’s already being floated by these within the trade, 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 new computing platforms to eclipse the smartphone, like sensible glasses, ambient computing gadgets, or reimagined smartwatches with AI options.
OpenAI is even engaged on an AI {hardware} machine 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 could possibly be led by creators who’ve concepts however not the technical abilities to design cell software program.
Appfigures’ information signifies that sure classes of apps are seeing extra new releases than others.
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Cell video games nonetheless account for many 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, could possibly be behind the surge of recent launches. It additionally appears potential that we’re hitting some form of tipping level by way of 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 recent apps for Apple to evaluation is also behind a few of the tech big’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 Reside, that drained $9.5 million in crypto from victims’ accounts.
Whereas high-profile issues like this could generate unhealthy PR for the App Retailer, the corporate nonetheless does quite a lot of heavy lifting by way of blocking and rejecting harmful or spammy apps. Apple’s most up-to-date evaluation from 2024 mentioned 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 had been discovered to be spam, copying different apps, or deceptive; and took motion to stop greater than 37,000 doubtlessly 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 kinds that watches for scammy or fraudulent apps which can be 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 can be benign.
