App Store submissions surge
- Apple’s App Store is seeing a sharp rebound in new apps, with Appfigures estimating iOS releases rose 80% year over year in the first quarter of 2026. - A separate report said Apple processed more than 200,000 submissions a week over the last 12 weeks, while keeping average review time at 1.5 days. - The surge follows years of decline and is colliding with Apple’s crackdown on code-generating “vibe coding” apps like Anything and Replit. (techcrunch.com)
New apps are flooding back into Apple’s App Store after years of decline, and the biggest shift appears to be AI-assisted software creation. (techcrunch.com) (9to5mac.com) Market intelligence firm Appfigures said iOS app releases rose 80% year over year in the first quarter of 2026. Across Apple’s App Store and Google Play combined, releases were up 60%. (techcrunch.com) By April 2026, Appfigures said total releases across both stores were running 104% above the same period a year earlier, with iOS alone up 89%. Greg Joswiak, Apple’s marketing chief, said reports of the App Store’s death “may have been greatly exaggerated.” (techcrunch.com) Another report, citing Sensor Tower data, found new apps on the App Store grew 30% in 2025 to nearly 600,000 after submissions had fallen 46% between 2016 and 2024. Sensor Tower analyst Abraham Yousef said the jump aligned with the release of “agentic coding tools.” (9to5mac.com) Those tools write, debug, and revise code from plain-language prompts, which lowers the barrier for nonprogrammers and lets experienced developers ship faster. TechCrunch said productivity apps moved into the top five categories for new releases in 2026. (techcrunch.com) (9to5mac.com) Apple says the review system is still moving quickly. The company told The Information it processed more than 200,000 submissions a week over the prior 12 weeks, handled 90% within 48 hours, and averaged 1.5 days per review. (9to5mac.com) At the same time, Apple has started blocking or removing some apps built around on-device code generation. TechCrunch reported that Anything was removed on March 26, briefly restored on April 3, then removed again; Replit and Vibecode also had updates paused. (techcrunch.com) Apple told Anything that its app ran into Developer Program License Agreement clause 2.5.2, which bars apps from downloading, installing, or executing code that changes an app’s primary purpose. Anything co-founder Dhruv Amin said the company rewrote the app four times and is now building a desktop companion. (techcrunch.com) So the App Store is growing again, but not in the way Apple spent the last decade training it to grow. More apps are getting built faster, while Apple is trying to keep the rules for what an iPhone app can do from changing underneath it. (techcrunch.com 1) (techcrunch.com 2)
