Everyone said AI would kill apps. Instead, new app releases are proliferating.
Global app releases in the first quarter of 2026 grew 60% year over year on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play, according to new analysis from market intelligence provider Appfigures. Looking at the iOS App Store alone, the percentage was even higher at 80%. The total number of app releases so far in April 2026 is up 104% on both stores and 89% on iOS compared to the same period last year.
Greg “Jos” Jozwiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, quipped in a recent interview that rumors of the App Store’s demise in the age of AI “may be greatly exaggerated.”
These findings come amid concerns that the rise of AI chatbots and agents will ultimately drive users away from apps, a theory already advanced by industry insiders like Karl Pei, CEO of Nothing, which is focused on developing smartphones for the AI era. Last year, the New York Times also reported on the potential for new computing platforms to surpass smartphones, such as smart glasses, ambient computing devices, or reimagined smartwatches with AI capabilities.
OpenAI is also working with famed Apple designer Jony Ive to develop AI hardware devices.
But there is another possibility. AI will make it easier for anyone to create apps and will help revive the App Store. The gold rush for new apps is likely to be led by creators who have ideas but lack the technical skills to design mobile software.
Appfigures data shows that certain categories of apps have more new releases than others.
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As of Q1 2026, mobile games will continue to account for the majority of new apps released worldwide. However, this year, “productivity” apps made it into the top five. The “Utilities” category also moved up to #2, and the “Lifestyle” app category rose to #3 from #5 last year. Finally, “health and fitness” style applications round out the top five categories.
The working hypothesis here is that AI-powered tools like Claude Code and Replit could be behind the surge in new releases. It also appears that we may be reaching a tipping point of sorts when it comes to the usability of AI. These tools will make it easier for people to build their own purpose-built mobile apps faster, or even build their first app.
The explosion of new apps for Apple to review may also be behind the tech giant’s recent failures. This week, Apple removed points app Freecash from the App Store for violating its rules, after the app rose to the top of the store’s charts and remained in the top five for months. Apple was also caught off guard by a malicious crypto app that was a clone of Ledger Live, draining $9.5 million in crypto from victims’ accounts.
While high-profile issues like this can generate bad PR for the App Store, the company still does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to blocking or denying dangerous or spam apps. Apple’s latest analysis for 2024 shows that the company removed or rejected more than 17,000 apps that year for bait-and-switch violations. We’ve rejected over 320,000 app submissions that we found to be spam, copies of other apps, or misleading. And we’ve taken steps to prevent more than 37,000 potentially malicious apps from reaching App Store users.
Still, Apple experts like John Gruber have long argued that the App Store needs a kind of “bunch squad” to monitor fraudulent apps that become popular or profitable.
If AI-assisted vibecoding turns out to be behind the recent surge in app releases, the need for it will only grow as more new apps flood the market, and not all of them are harmless.
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