Everyone mentioned AI would kill apps. Instead, new app launches are hovering.
According 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 Store and Google Play. That share was an excellent larger 80% when trying on the iOS App Store alone. In April 2026 thus far, the whole variety of app releases is up 104% throughout each shops in comparison with the identical time final yr, and up 89% on iOS.
As Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, quipped In a latest interview: rumors of the App Store’s loss of life within the AI age “may have been greatly exaggerated.”
These findings come amid considerations that the rise of AI chatbots and brokers would finally 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 Times additionally reported final yr on the potential for brand spanking new computing platforms to eclipse the smartphone, like good 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.
But there’s one other chance, too: AI will make it simpler for anybody to create apps, driving a rebirth of the App Store. The new app gold rush might 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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Mobile video games nonetheless account for a lot of the new app releases worldwide as of Q1 2026, as they’ve in prior years. But “productivity” apps have moved into the highest 5 this yr. The “utilities” class has additionally moved as much as the quantity two slot, and the “lifestyle” apps class moved up from the No. 5 slot final yr to now No. 3. Finally, “health and fitness”-style purposes rounded out the highest 5 classes.
The working speculation right here is that AI-powered instruments, like Claude Code or Replit, might be behind the surge of recent 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 shortly — and even construct their first apps ever.
The explosion of recent apps for Apple to overview might additionally be behind among the tech big’s latest missteps. This week, Apple pulled the rewards app Freecash from the App Store for guidelines violations, after letting the app climb the shop’s Top Charts and sit within the prime 5 for months. Apple was additionally caught off guard by a malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of Ledger Live, that drained $9.5 million in crypto from victims’ accounts.
While high-profile issues like this could generate dangerous PR for the App Store, the corporate nonetheless does quite a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to 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 yr; 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 doubtlessly fraudulent apps from reaching customers on the App Store.
Still, Apple pundits like John Gruber have lengthy argued that the App Store wants a “bunco squad” of types that watches for scammy or fraudulent apps which might be gaining in recognition or high-grossing.
If AI-assisted vibe coding seems to be behind the latest surge of app releases, that want will solely develop as extra new apps flood {the marketplace}, not all of which can be benign.