Everybody stated AI would kill apps. As an alternative, new app launches are hovering.
In step with a brand new research from marketplace intelligence supplier Appfigures, international 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 proportion used to be a fair upper 80% when having a look on the iOS App Retailer by myself. In April 2026 to this point, the entire selection of app releases is up 104% throughout each shops in comparison to the similar time ultimate 12 months, and up 89% on iOS.
As Apple’s Senior Vice President of International Advertising and marketing, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, quipped In a up to date interview: rumors of the App Retailer’s loss of life within the AI age “could have been a great deal exaggerated.”
Those findings come amid issues that the upward push of AI chatbots and brokers would in the long run see customers turning clear of apps — a idea that’s already being floated through the ones within the business, like Not anything CEO Carl Pei, who’s desirous about development a smartphone for the AI generation. The New York Occasions additionally reported ultimate 12 months on the possibility of new computing platforms to eclipse the smartphone, like good glasses, ambient computing gadgets, or reimagined smartwatches with AI options.
OpenAI is even operating on an AI {hardware} instrument with famed Apple fashion designer Jony Ive.
However there’s every other chance, too: AI will make it more straightforward for someone to create apps, riding a rebirth of the App Retailer. The brand new app gold rush may well be led through creators who’ve concepts however now not the technical talents to design cellular instrument.
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 international 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 ultimate 12 months to now No. 3. In spite of everything, “well being and health”-style packages rounded out the highest 5 classes.
The operating speculation here’s that AI-powered gear, like Claude Code or Replit, may well be in the back of the surge of latest launches. It additionally turns out imaginable that we’re hitting some type of tipping level in the case of AI usability, the place it’s simple sufficient for other folks to leverage those gear to construct their very own desired cellular apps extra temporarily — and even construct their first apps ever.
The explosion of latest apps for Apple to study is also in the back of one of the most tech large’s contemporary missteps. This week, Apple pulled the rewards app Freecash from the App Retailer for regulations violations, after letting the app climb the shop’s Most sensible Charts and take a seat within the best 5 for months. Apple used to be additionally stuck off guard through a malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of Ledger Reside, that tired $9.5 million in crypto from sufferers’ accounts.
Whilst high-profile issues like this will generate unhealthy PR for the App Retailer, the corporate nonetheless does a large number of heavy lifting in the case of blockading and rejecting bad or spammy apps. Apple’s most up-to-date research from 2024 stated the corporate had got rid of 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 unsolicited mail, copying different apps, or deceptive; and took motion to forestall greater than 37,000 probably fraudulent apps from attaining customers at the App Retailer.
Nonetheless, Apple pundits like John Gruber have lengthy argued that the App Retailer wishes a “bunco squad” of varieties that watches for scammy or fraudulent apps which might be gaining in reputation or high-grossing.
If AI-assisted vibe coding seems to be in the back of the new surge of app releases, that want will handiest develop as extra new apps flood {the marketplace}, now not all of which might be benign.
