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Apple's App Store Hits One Million Apps in the United States

johnnnw said:
About 1000 are worth downloading.
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So true.

It's such a pain to sift through all the crap to find something halfway decent. I think that rather than Apple's lust for moor and more apps, they should make them auto delete from the store unless they are highly rated and updated at regular intervals. There are a load of apps there that have been abandoned and only get in the way when looking for what someone might want. It'd take over a year just to go through all hat million apps of which most are junk. There needs to be STRICT guidelines as to just what is allowed to be added....and make them expire off the store if they are low rated useless junk :D
 
MacRumors said:
Apple noted that it had a million apps in its worldwide catalog back in October [...] Apple has approved a total of approximately 1,439,451 apps since the App Store opened in 2008.
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So does this mean there are about 400,000 apps that were approved and that are no longer available on the store? If so, that's a huge amount.

I would guess that each of these apps are no longer "live" because either the app has not kept up with the new minimum iOS requirements, the developer didn't pay their dues for the developer program, and/or Apple decided later that it wanted to pull the app for (allegedly) breaking store rules?
 
MacRumors said:
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Apple's U.S. App Store has reached one million live apps, according to data from app discovery platform Appsfire. Our own app discovery site AppShopper lists the same one million milestone, with a total of 1,006,557 apps available for download at the time of writing.

While Apple noted that it had a million apps in its worldwide catalog back in October, this marks the first time that various app platforms have seen the U.S. numbers climb above one million.

Apple has approved a total of approximately 1,439,451 apps since the App Store opened in 2008 and over the course of the year, has been creeping towards the million milestone. Of the 1 million apps available for download, more than half a million are available for Apple's iPad, and over 900,000 are available for the iPhone. The company has now paid out more than $13 billion to App Store developers.

In May of 2013, Apple hit 50 billion worldwide app downloads, which it celebrated with a promotion for a $10,000 gift card for the person who downloaded the 50 billionth app. Currently, those numbers have climbed to 60 billion downloads, putting Apple well on its way towards its 100 billion download milestone.

Article Link: Apple's App Store Hits One Million Apps in the United States
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The Average person only use about 10 apps on a daily or weekly basis. Numbers mean nothing over quality and availability of of a specific app
 
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kdarling said:
Dunno, but there's also probably tens ... if not hundreds... of thousands of apps that no longer show up because their developers stopped paying the yearly $99 Apple dev signup, which is required even if the app is free.

Other popular smartphone systems usually only charge developers once.

It's especially bad for hobbyists and those who put out free apps. In the past, I've made custom WinMo, WebOS and Android apps for my family and friends, something that would cost hundreds of dollars over the years to do on iOS.

Even if you just gave an app to family as your "testers", their test profile would disappear each year if you didn't always give Apple their ~$100.
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I think they should just remove your listing when you stop paying but still allow people with a URL to it to download.
 
scottsjack said:
Maybe.

But then this is MacRumors. High numbers and big percentages are definitely shiny objects here!
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But only when they favor Apple. If another company has better numbers, then numbers suddenly aren't important and percentages are meaningless.
 
Don't forget how much higher this would be if it wasn't moderated, they allowed 'adult' apps, etc. With how relatively restrictive their guidelines are, to STILL get a million apps, that is a hell of a lot of apps. I wonder how many of them are truly awful.
 
scottsjack said:
Maybe.

For those who rate things by how big the number are (Apple fans are great at that) I guess one million apps are important. I have not found or heard of any App Store apps that are as good as Adobe Photoshop or MS Office 2011 so in those two categories the App Store has zero apps to me.

But then this is MacRumors. High numbers and big percentages are definitely shiny objects here!
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As if no other fanboys do that. :rolleyes:
 
Prof. said:
Exactly. Of the 1,000,000 apps, how many of them have NOT been downloaded?
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At the WWDC keynote Tim Cook said there were 900K apps in the AppStore and over 90% were downloaded each month.
 
Quantity does not equal quality. Something that Jobs used to say at keynotes when comparing number of windows apps vs Mac.

One million Is good bragging rights for Apple.
 
9000 said:
Web apps suck.
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Apple could invest as much resources into providing the tools and resources to developers to make quality web apps as they do with native apps. Some things can truly only be done through native apps today, but many things could be done with web apps. But Apple doesn't give out anything that's close to the iOS (or OS X) SDKs or Xcode for building web apps.

If they did that, you'd see a lot more quality web apps. IE, Apple could build a store / IAP and iWebs for web apps, so that people would be willing to invest time in making quality web apps since they could generate revenue.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Apple could invest as much resources into providing the tools and resources to developers to make quality web apps as they do with native apps. Some things can truly only be done through native apps today, but many things could be done with web apps. But Apple doesn't give out anything that's close to the iOS (or OS X) SDKs or Xcode for building web apps.

If they did that, you'd see a lot more quality web apps. IE, Apple could build a store / IAP and iWebs for web apps, so that people would be willing to invest time in making quality web apps since they could generate revenue.
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Problem with web apps, you've got to be connected to internet ( so useless for when there's no internet available, unless you cache the apps on the iDevice). Mobile Data is still quite expensive. Apple could build upon Widgets in OSX, and introduce them for iOS. There used to be that Widget Development IDE that Apple built, given away with OSX.

Personally, I'd rather Apple improve XCode, which still lacks basic development features of other IDEs. Also built in support for Cocoa Pods.

They could also improve the API. For example, ensuring the keyboard doesn't cover the currently focused field that is being edited... you have to do this yourself, if not in a UITableView.
 
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Happy to report I'm sticking with iOS 6, which means I don't have to mess with upgrading my apps anymore. What a nightmare that was turning out to be.

Apple needs a decent way of searching for apps (both in the iTunes store and the Mac App Store). Unfortunately, a comic-book icon is not enough. And just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good.
 
kdarling said:
Dunno, but there's also probably tens ... if not hundreds... of thousands of apps that no longer show up because their developers stopped paying the yearly $99 Apple dev signup, which is required even if the app is free.

Other popular smartphone systems usually only charge developers once.

It's especially bad for hobbyists and those who put out free apps. In the past, I've made custom WinMo, WebOS and Android apps for my family and friends, something that would cost hundreds of dollars over the years to do on iOS.

Even if you just gave an app to family as your "testers", their test profile would disappear each year if you didn't always give Apple their ~$100.
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Well it is a store and not really aimed at hobbyists.
 
Stella said:
There are plenty of hobbyist developers submitting apps to App Store.
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By hobbyist, we're talking about people who would normally NOT want their app in a public store. And who especially have no desire to pay a yearly extortion fee.

E.g. I have a friend who's a surfer, and he's only interested in the surf conditions at the beach near his home. So over the years I've made one-off apps for him under Blackberry and WebOS and Android that did nothing else.

With all those other platforms, the SDK was either free or a one-time fee, and I was able to simply email him the app to sideload. Done. No more cost to me.

With iOS, I would have to pay Apple $100 a year and either put it in the App Store, or update his "tester" profile every year to keep the app alive.

That's one of the reasons why there's so many junk apps. Hobbyists find it easier to submit their app to Apple.

Appstore is aimed at both hobbyists and professional developers.
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The trouble is, there's no (non-jailbreak) alternative to Apple's store.

Jobs used to mock the carriers and their walled app gardens, and then he turned around and built an even higher walled garden of his own.

At least the carriers never prevented smartphone users from downloading apps from other stores, or making their own and giving them to friends and family.
 
Thanks for clarifying.

QFT.

I've always had the opinion - why should I pay Apple $100 to be able to install my own application on my own device.

Friends and Family isn't that much different.

We need a Gatekeeper for iOS. Sadly, it isn't coming any time soon.

kdarling said:
By hobbyist, we're talking about people who would normally NOT want their app in a public store. And who especially have no desire to pay a yearly extortion fee.

E.g. I have a friend who's a surfer, and he's only interested in the surf conditions at the beach near his home. So over the years I've made one-off apps for him under Blackberry and WebOS and Android that did nothing else.

With all those other platforms, the SDK was either free or a one-time fee, and I was able to simply email him the app to sideload. Done. No more cost to me.

With iOS, I would have to pay Apple $100 a year and either put it in the App Store, or update his "tester" profile every year to keep the app alive.

That's one of the reasons why there's so many junk apps. Hobbyists find it easier to submit their app to Apple.



The trouble is, there's no (non-jailbreak) alternative to Apple's store.

Jobs used to mock the carriers and their walled app gardens, and then he turned around and built an even higher walled garden of his own.

At least the carriers never prevented smartphone users from downloading apps from other stores, or making their own and giving them to friends and family.
Click to expand...
 
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