The App Store is booming again, and AI may be why

Everyone said AI will kill apps. However, new app launches are on the rise.

According to a new analysis from the market intelligence provider Appfiguresworldwide app releases in the first quarter of 2026 increased by 60% year-over-year in the Apple App Store and Google Play. That percentage is 80% higher when looking at the iOS App Store alone. In April 2026 to date, the total number of app releases increased by 104% in the same stores compared to the same time last year, and an increase of 89% in iOS.

As Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, teased by In recent interview: Rumors of the App Store’s demise in the AI ​​age “may be greatly exaggerated.”

These findings come amid concerns that the rise of AI chatbots and agents will eventually see users turn away from apps – a theory already floated by those in the industry, like Nothing CEO Carl Peiwho is focused on building a smartphone for the AI ​​era. The New York Times Last year also reported the potential for new computing platforms to eclipse the smartphone, such as smart glasses, ambient computing devices, or reimagined smartwatches with AI features.

OpenAI is the same working on an AI hardware device with famous Apple designer Jony Ive.

But there is another possibility, too: AI will make it easier for anyone to create apps, driving a rebirth of the App Store. The new app gold rush will be led by creators with ideas but not the technical skills to design mobile software.

Appfigures data shows that some categories of apps see more new releases than others.

Mobile games still account for the majority of newly released apps worldwide in Q1 2026, as in previous years. But “productivity” apps moved into the top five this year. The “utilities” category also moved up to the number two slot, and the “lifestyle” apps category moved from No. 5 slot last year until now No. 3. Finally, “health and fitness”-style applications round out the top five categories.

The working hypothesis here is that AI-powered tools, such as Claude Code or Replit, may be behind the influx of new launches. It’s also possible that we’ve hit some kind of tipping point in terms of AI usability, where people can easily use these tools to build their own desired mobile apps faster – or even create their first apps ever.

The explosion of new apps for Apple to review may also be behind some of the tech giant’s recent mistakes. this week, Apple has removed the Freecash rewards app from the App Store for rules violations, after letting the app climb the store’s Top Charts and sit in the top five for months. Apple has also been caught in a malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of Ledger Live, which spent $9.5 million in crypto from the victims’ accounts.

While high-profile problems like this create bad PR for the App Store, the company still does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of blocking and rejecting dangerous or spammy apps. by Apple latest analysis from 2024 said the company removed or rejected more than 17,000 apps for bait-and-switch violations that year; rejected more than 320,000 app submissions found to be spam, duplicating other apps, or misleading; and took action to prevent more than 37,000 potentially fraudulent apps from reaching App Store users.

However, Apple pundits like John Gruber have argued for a long time that the App Store needs a “bunco squad” of sorts that watches out for scammy or fraudulent apps that are gaining popularity or high profits.

If the AI-assisted vibe coding has been behind the recent surge in app releases, that demand will only grow as more new apps flood the market, not all of them bad.