Total Number of App Store Apps Shrank in 2017 Thanks to Apple's Quality Crackdown

[YaBe]

Not for the consumer. Am not attacking you. The ‘problem’ we have here is the difference in language. Over here we say create something if it’s beautiful and has a nice feel to it we say it’s design. Like Apple, B&O stuff we say that is design. When we look at the icons and emojis on Android we say that’s just ugly. Which they are, freaking ugly. But design is not how it works. It’s how it looks like Apple or B&O stuff. How it works is the way you created it. Creating and designing is apparently the same thing for you guys in America.

As much as I understand your point, I disagree, look is subjective (as a matter of fact i prefere the 2d Emoji in Android than the old style bubbly iOS one), how it works is not.

You cannot argue that inserting multiple attachment on mail is no easy or intuitive...

Forms follows function not the other way around, you do not design a tool to look good, you design it to make it work, then and only then you "beautify it".

As a consumer I buy stuff I need to use, not to look at, that is what art is for.

"The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked." S.J.

And to quote another person, and possibly the best description I have heard about design is:
“Design has to work, art does not.” D.J.

 

[deanthedev]

That's the problem. There are no 2 million uses cases out there. Nobody needs 100 different calculators or 50 different WiFi explorers. But at a price point of just a few bucks and this kind of competition almost nobody can generate a sustainable income. Successful are usually only the companies who need to complement their software portfolio with a mobile device app or the ones who are using the app to sell their already existing web services. Stand alone apps are too easy to copy and it is impossible to generate a sustainable income from selling them for $1.

This whole App development BS (no matter on which platform) is a huge scam. Because the only company really making money off of it is Apple and a few bigger software companies who are already big in the business. If there are 2 million apps in the App Store, how do I find an app with a completely dumb interface like they are using it right now? Only if you directly know the name and enter it, otherwise you are lost in app space... How can I compare competing apps if there is no way to test them properly before buying?

When all that hype began back then, I was considering to get into app development (because Apple sold it as THE next big thing) and THANK GOD I did the math before I started. And I was right... Several friends who did app development turned their backs on it again, because there was no money in it and as a hobby it was too time consuming.

And honestly, how many apps do I use almost daily myself on top of the ones that are coming already with iOS? A handful... maybe 5? The dozens of other apps I accumulated over the years on my phone mostly just occupy memory for nothing. Most of the time I am trying to avoid using the phone anyway when I am not in a working environment. Fiddling around with a mobile device all the time is such a serious waste of time. And I don't even remember exactly when I bought an app the last time, because the ones I have do the job just beautifully for me.

The App Store reminds me so much of Spotify. The artists get almost nada, while Spotify is filling their pockets. The big companies are making a crazy amount of revenue off the intellectual property of others, who almost get nothing for their work and people are standing by and applaud this genius exploitation scheme. Shows how brain-washed our society has become. Brave new world.

Rubbish. How can you claim only Apple is making money when they only take 30% (and pay all the hosting/bandwidth costs)? Or claim only big studios make money when there have been numerous success stories of smaller studios/developers doing well (many who didn’t exist prior to The App Store).

You sound like the software development equivalent of an independent musician. Always whining about the big name artists with less talent making all the money while they’re getting nothing. And then blaming the distribution method of music for their lack of success instead of themselves.

 

[Solomani]

Taking out the garbage was long overdue in the App Store.

 

[garygrapeappleb]

Not really true. There are lots of apps I paid for on my old iPod that I want to redownload from the AppStore but there are not available anymore. Apple should give us access to apps we've bought.

Even worse, if a developer stops paying the annual $99 fee, their apps are pulled from the store. This is clearly a pay-to-play situation. I have no problem with charging a fee for tools, or creating new apps, but once development is halted, they should not be charging just to keep the app in the store. This is especially unfair to those who bought the apps in the past and want to download to a new device.

 

[ChrisCW11]

Lol, so for years Apple bragged about having the most apps, realized a lot were crap, removed them, and now use the fact that Google has more apps as a sign their competitor has a poor quality platform...typical.

 

[Doomtomb]

This is what I call progress.

Quality over Quantity.

 

[BeefCake 15]

There are plenty of garbage apps in the App Store.

Garbage is subjective, Apple laid out objective criteria to get rid of apps.

 

[dwaltwhit]

Lots of great apps I paid for no longer in the store thanks to Apple's incessant updates.

Why would you want updates to cease?
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So there is 2.1 million apps in the AppStore out of which probably 2 million of them are still garbage outdated apps, leaving about 100k worthwhile apps to consume.

Even with your exaggerated numbers, 100K "worthwhile" apps is still a ton of apps.

 

[groovebuster]

Rubbish. How can you claim only Apple is making money when they only take 30% (and pay all the hosting/bandwidth costs)? Or claim only big studios make money when there have been numerous success stories of smaller studios/developers doing well (many who didn’t exist prior to The App Store).

You sound like the software development equivalent of an independent musician. Always whining about the big name artists with less talent making all the money while they’re getting nothing. And then blaming the distribution method of music for their lack of success instead of themselves.

Neither do you know me, nor do you know what I am doing for a living. And thank you you for calling me talentless indirectly, just because I obviously have a different opinion. Very classy. I am making good money in the IT (thank God, no App development) biz AND am a musician too, so no reason to complain for me.
But you are just proving that you didn't get my comment at all. Of course there are a few small studios doing well. But the majority doesn't. Apple gave the false promise that you can turn **** into gold, once you start developing apps (which I never believed, as I pointed out already). BTW, you do understand the difference between 30% of ALL apps sold and 70% of your apps sold? And Apple's business model makes it even harder for small developers to make any money off their work.
Your assumptions how you think I sound like are funny. Maybe you should look more into distribution models in general but especially in the music industry, including Spotify and how the market has changed since streaming services are destroying revenue streams especially for small and independent artists, before you let more brain farts out. But somehow I have the suspicion that would be wasted time for you. So forget about it.

 

[Mac Tyson]

And people still claim that iOS is the platform to develop on....
Apple is facing the same issues they faced with Windows and its going to work out for them exactly how it worked out for them in the past. Not good long term.

IoS is still the platform to develop for. Affinity apps still iOS only. There's still no Fortnite on Android yet. HQ Trivia comes out on iOS, Android later,

 

[nikaru]

Innovative Apps for Apple platforms are dead. Apple killed them by screwing small developers.

In 2008, Apple needed a large number of Apps to establish their platform so they had to "lay down with the dogs".
Now they've taken a flea bath and have thrown the Innovation "baby out with the bath water".

Pathetic troll....

Apple gets a cut from the sale proceeds and ads revenue. It is in their best interest to have innovative apps that drive downloads, trafic and impressions. For the same reason Google will allow literally any app to be published in their BS store. It is obvious that Apple is investing in quality and user experience rather than just numbers.

 

[alien3dx]

Rubbish. How can you claim only Apple is making money when they only take 30% (and pay all the hosting/bandwidth costs)? Or claim only big studios make money when there have been numerous success stories of smaller studios/developers doing well (many who didn’t exist prior to The App Store).

You sound like the software development equivalent of an independent musician. Always whining about the big name artists with less talent making all the money while they’re getting nothing. And then blaming the distribution method of music for their lack of success instead of themselves.

A real life project also like that, marketer take commission up to 30 to 50% .While in the end developer are the last person to get paid unless you do own consultation.Development cost are pretty high,not just electrical which mostly assume by non noobs . And this not happen just for software development but in other sector also..Commision is norm,bribe is norm..

To build apple app profitable ?
I don't think so. just survival yes.. Unless you're big company like EA,Nermarble which earn billion per years. Normal indie app, just survival .
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Pathetic troll....

Apple gets a cut from the sale proceeds and ads revenue. It is in their best interest to have innovative apps that drive downloads, trafic and impressions. For the same reason Google will allow literally any app to be published in their BS store. It is obvious that Apple is investing in quality and user experience rather than just numbers.

Reality is not, apple is cheating. We developer are force to create with latest ios 11. Unless you want to see a lot of annoying warning error. Most sub program in Github are not update-able as fast apple does.

In software development, some call as "ain't broke . don't fix it ".As long customer happy with all the bugs riddle. We just ignore it.

If we create with ios 11 are it will be quality ?
No, will get pretty lot of bugs undetected. That's why we got LTS term long term stability while fall back "ain't broke. don't fix it"

 

[sirozha]

It’s funny how companies and the media can spin anything to fit a narrative.
In the past it was all about bragging about how many apps a platform had, and how there’s an app for everything. Now when the app number declines it’s all about how superior quality control pays off.

Once you pass one million mark, who cares how many apps are there? No one will ever be able to try all of them. At that point, it's about quality, not quantity.

However, if a platform only has 100,000 apps, it very well may be that you may not be able to find an app that does what you need. So, it's a balancing act. In the early days of the App Store and Google Play, it was a race to 1 million apps. Once that threshold was reached, it became more important for Apple to get rid of the junk. The Apple App Store is definitely policed more strictly than the Google Play Store. I don't think it's important anymore which platform has more apps. What's important is how secure and usable those apps are. If Google were to throw out 3 million apps and keep just 1 million, I would cheer them on.

 

[JRobinsonJr]

Perhaps it's not so much an issue as the overall number of apps / new apps / etc., as it is that there is a limited range of consumer need... and all of those are currently being filled. Once you have 10, 15, 400 apps that perform FunctionX, there's little incentive to build #401. When Apple provides an expanded base for app ideas - through hardware, core software, API's, etc. - then we'll have new types of apps being created again.

As for quality over quantity, IMO that is not really an issue of value to the customer as it is function. Apps that make use of the most recent API's, xCode, UI enhancement, screen sizes, etc., can indeed be considered as having a higher quality than ones using older development methods. I'm OK with forcing developers to periodically update, and as a paying consumer would have zero problem paying for these updates.

In my opinion, the bigger issue - applicable to both iOS and Android - is *FINDING* apps. Particularly on a hand-held device there is no practical way for me to scroll through and read about even a couple of hundred apps... much less several thousand. For this Apple needs to have a much broader set of categories / sub-categories and other meta-data so that users can quickly find new apps as well as browsing through older apps.

 

[rohanparekh]

Solution is Scott Forstall. But Jony won't let it happen

 

[RemE]

I couldn't be more pissed at Apple for the blanket kill off of perfectly great 32bit app support. I have several cherished and very helpful apps written by talented folks who can't be bothered to go back and re-work them. This doesn't diminish how useful the apps were, they were great apps, like remote potato, and other now low volume but still vital to us few left needing them. I makes me like Apple less, period.

 

[RogerWilco]

Or, just maybe, iOS market share has reached a tipping point versus the competition. Are we headed for a subscription model in the App Store?

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Still a lot of crAPPS. And replete w/ bugs and ads and Freemium junk.

 

[elppa]

Google relaxed their rules on gambling apps in 2017 - so that may have made a small contribution to the Android growth.

 

[mi7chy]

This just shows developers jumping ship and why Apple need to focus more on increasing market share and less on greedy profit. There's less incentive to develop for a platform that only generates 8,000 reviews when the other platform does 960,000.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pubg-mobile/id1330123889?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tencent.ig&hl=en_US

 

[oneMadRssn]

Quality increases by quantity.

When has this ever been true? Quality almost always decreases with quantity.

 

[alien3dx]

I couldn't be more pissed at Apple for the blanket kill off of perfectly great 32bit app support. I have several cherished and very helpful apps written by talented folks who can't be bothered to go back and re-work them. This doesn't diminish how useful the apps were, they were great apps, like remote potato, and other now low volume but still vital to us few left needing them. I makes me like Apple less, period.

it will the same problem even 64.. if the developer don't renew their license.. kabish..

 

[mrex]

This is great, quality > quantity

It would be possible If only they remove 99,9% apps from appstore. It would still be 2000 apps, and im sure there isnt 2000 quality apps on appstore at the moment.

Anyway... the real problem with appstore is that you cant find anything from there. Not even the app with the name you know. You need to use google to find and get the the link to the right app in appstore. Appstore just sucks..

 

[hasanahmad]

Quality increases by quantity. I couldn't find any quality apps on App Store, so I switched to Android.

lol bs
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This just shows developers jumping ship and why Apple need to focus more on increasing market share and less on greedy profit. There's less incentive to develop for a platform that only generates 8,000 reviews when the other platform does 960,000.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pubg-mobile/id1330123889?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tencent.ig&hl=en_US

most iOS players are playing Fortnight which is a better game and is not out on Android yet because developers base platform is iOS

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fortnite/id1261357853?mt=8

400,000 reviews.

 

[Regime2008]

lol bs
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most iOS players are playing Fortnight which is a better game and is not out on Android yet because developers base platform is iOS

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fortnite/id1261357853?mt=8

400,000 reviews.

So much is wrong with your post. It's like someone saying Flavor A is better than Flavor B. They are all going to be personal preference at the end of the day.
Secondly, Epic didn't chose ios over Android. There are many more Android devices out in the world, (different hardware specs, resolutions, etc) compared to a few models of iphones. As matter a fact, Epic Games dev's themselves said this.

Epic Games isn't doing this because they want to leave Android players out in the cold, however. The developer isn't playing favorites with Apple. It's just that Apple's devices are much more uniform than Android devices. The open nature of the Android platform means that there's dozens of different devices across nearly as many brands, from Samsung to LG to Google to Huawei.
“There’s a very wide range of Android devices that we want to support," Epic Games' Nick Chester told me via email. "We want to make sure Android players have a great experience, so we’re taking more time to get it right.“

Link for reference
Sometimes its easier to fact check instead of spewing lies.