Everyone said AI will kill apps. Instead, the introduction of new applications is increasing.
According to new analysis from market intelligence provider Appfigures, worldwide app releases in the first quarter of 2026 were up 60% year-on-year across Apple’s App Store and Google Play. That percentage was over 80% when looking at the iOS App Store alone. In April 2026 to date, the total number of app releases is up 104% in both stores compared to the same period last year, and up 89% on iOS.
As Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, joked in a recent interview: rumors of the death of the App Store in the age of AI “may have been greatly exaggerated.”
The findings come amid concerns that the rise of chatbots and AI agents will eventually see users turn their backs on apps — a theory already floated by those in the industry, such as Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who is focused on building the smartphone for the AI era. The New York Times also reported last year about the possibilities for new computing platforms to overshadow the smartphone, such as smart glasses, peripheral computing devices, or reimagined watches with AI features.
OpenAI is even working on an AI hardware device with Apple’s legendary inventor Jony Ive.
But there is another possibility, too: AI will make it easier for anyone to create apps, driving the rebirth of the App Store. A new gold rush program can be led by creators who have ideas but lack the technical skills to design mobile software.
Appfigures data shows that certain categories of apps see more new releases than others.
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Mobile games still account for the most new app releases worldwide from Q1 2026, as in previous years. But “productivity” apps moved into the top five this year. The “utilities” category also moved up to second place, and the “lifestyle” apps category moved up from the No. 1 spot. 5 last year and now at No. 3. Finally, “health and fitness” style apps rounded out the top five categories.
The working hypothesis here is that tools powered by AI, such as Claude Code or Replit, could be behind the launch of the new launch. It also seems possible that we’re reaching some kind of tipping point in terms of the usability of AI, where it’s easy for people to use these tools to build their desired mobile apps very quickly – or even build their first apps.
The explosion of new apps to be updated by Apple may also be the reason for the tech giant’s recent mistakes. This week, Apple pulled the Freecash app awards from the App Store for breaking the rules, after allowing the app to climb the store’s Top Charts and stay in the top five for months. Apple was also caught by a malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of Ledger Live, which drained $9.5 million of crypto from victims’ accounts.
While high-profile issues like these may generate bad PR for the App Store, the company still does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of blocking and rejecting malicious or spammy apps. Apple’s latest analysis from 2024 said the company removed or rejected more than 17,000 apps for bait-and-switch violations that year; rejected the submission of more than 320,000 applications found to be spam, copying other applications, or misleading; and we took action to prevent more than 37,000 potentially fraudulent apps from reaching users in the App Store.
Still, Apple experts like John Gruber have long argued that the App Store needs a “bunco group” of sorts that watches out for scam or fake apps that gain popularity or make a lot of money.
If AI-assisted vibe coding turns out to be the catalyst for the latest app releases, that demand will only grow as more new apps flood the marketplace, not all of which will be healthy.
