Google Play Store appear to be winning the favourite app store contest, as the amount of apps released in the Apple App Store fell for the first time in 2017.
A new data released by Appfigures showed that both Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store were growing consistently all the way up to 2017, when the former began to drop.
The data found that the amount of apps released on Apple’s App Store in 2017 was 755,000, representing a 29 percent decline from 2016, when the number hit one million. It is Apple’s first drop since the App Store was launched in 2008.
Meanwhile, the Google Play Store saw a surge of over 1.5 million new apps, about 17 percent rise from 2016 – the largest growth since 2014.
According to Appfigures, the decline is a result of stricter enforcement of Apple’s review guidelines, as well as a technical change that eliminated many old apps that were not updated to support 64-bit architecture.
In June 2017, Apple had sent a notification to developers that new iOS apps and updates submitted to the App Store must support 64-bit.
“Support for 32-bit apps is not available in iOS 11 and all 32-bit apps previously installed on a user’s device will not launch. If you have not updated your app on the App Store to support 64-bit, we recommend submitting an update so your users can continue to run your apps on iOS 11, which will be in the hands of hundreds of millions of customers this fall,” Apple stated in that notice.
Apple’s stance has seen the number of apps overall inside its App Store shrink by 5 percent, falling from 2.2 million to 2.1 million, whereas, Google Play, is home to 3.6 million apps, continuing a steady 30 percent rise also observed last year over 2015.
Appfigure also disclosed that during the period, the number of apps being ported from one platform to the other – also known as ‘porting’ an app – increased. Porting an app refers to taking an app that was built for one platform and building it to run on a different platform.
In 2017, over 25,000 crossed from one platform to another. More than 16,000 of those apps went to Google Play in the same year.
“According to our algorithm that maps apps that cross platforms, roughly 450,000 apps are available for both iOS and Android. This is a failry decent amount, but when we look at the bigger picture, it amounts to just 8.5%,” Appsfigure stated.
