Apple's App Store

Discoverable progress to be a major hurdle for many app developers, new research projects that Apple’s App Store is going to be home to quite 5 million active apps by the top of 2020, a catalog 73 percent larger than we project it’ll have at the top of 2016. during this report, we’ll present what this growth seems like over the subsequent four years, and break down the categories adding the first new apps by month.

About This Data

In order to supply this report, the data science team analyzed historical data and trends from the App Store’s launch in 2008 through the present, utilizing our App Intelligence platform. The forecasted and historic catalog has shown within the growth chart below account for worldwide active apps on the shop at the top of every period, as against the entire number released (or projected to be released) in past or future years. These numbers account for universal, iPhone, and iPad apps connected.

The App Store in 4 Years: 5 Million Apps by 2020

Chart Showing Projected Growth in Number of Apps on the App Store by 2020

There were just over to 5,000 active apps on Apple’s App Store worldwide at the top of 2008, a total that grew to 1.75 million seven years later at the top of 2015. With just over 2 million active apps on the shop worldwide as of this writing, we project that this total will grow to 2.93 million by the top of 2016.

The App Store will add According to our projections, further 2.13 million apps over the coming. 4 years to have 5.06 million active apps by the best of 2020, doubling its size as of this report, and growing by 73 percent over where we estimate it’ll be at the top of this year.

Games Dominate New Apps Added Monthly

Digging deeper into the makeup of apps being released monthly on Apple’s App Store, we also took a glance at the category breakdown of all apps added worldwide in May 2016. In all, 48,231 new apps debuted on the shop in May, with the Games category accounting for about 43 percent of that number at nearly 21,000 new games added for the month.

Chart Showing Number of Apps Released for May 2016

The remaining 22 categories accounted for the opposite 57 percent of the latest apps, with Education, Entertainment, Business, and Lifestyle rounding out the best 5 in terms of apps added. Whether see the minor new apps in May at 134.

App Store Discoverability: An Evolving Challenge

We know where Apple’s App Store is heading within the next four years in terms of the number of apps, but what does this mean for app developers, not to say Apple itself? It’s clear from the problem developers are having getting their apps discovered on a store containing roughly two million apps that some significant steps on Apple’s part are going to be required to form discoverability viable when there are quite twice that number to deal with.

We’ve seen the primary steps on Apple’s part to deal with discoverability issues, such as launching new categories and announcing plans for Search Ads beforehand of June’s WWDC. But in light of our new findings, we are convinced that much more significant changes to the navigation, curation, and overall presentation of the App Store are going to be needed to support an ecosystem that’s twice today’s size just four years from now.

Some of these improvements will likely are available the shape of interface upgrades, while others may alright enjoy Apple’s App Store accelerated push into machine learning. most prominently within the new iOS 10 iMessage and Photos refresh, so it is not impossible to imagine a near-future App Store assistant that learns from user behavior to deliver customized recommendations, intelligently surfacing new apps supported behavior patterns or maybe conversations with others.

For now, however, the first prudent course for developers concerned about discoverability is one that begins with fundamental App Store Optimization techniques and iterates on them consistently to remain at the forefront of App Store search.

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