Mobile phone applications that were once thought to be eliminated by the AI era are now experiencing an unexpected wave of recovery. The latest analysis from market research firm Appfigures shows that in the first quarter of 2026, the number of new applications launched globally on Apple’s App Store and Google Play increased by approximately 60% year-on-year, with the iOS App Store’s growth rate reaching as high as 80%.
Since April, the number of new applications released by the two major app stores has continued to rise compared to the same period last year - the overall increase is about 104%, and the iOS platform has increased by about 89%. This series of data points to the same fact: the App Store has not only not "declined", but has returned to a high growth track.
Faced with the statement that "AI will end the App Store," Apple's senior vice president of global marketing Greg "Joz" Joswiak recently joked in an interview that the rumors that the App Store is "ending" in the AI era "may be seriously exaggerated." Prior to this, many voices in the industry believed that with the rise of AI chatbots and intelligent agents, users would gradually abandon traditional apps and instead interact with the system through natural language. Some entrepreneurs, including Nothing CEO Pei Yu, even openly bet on a new paradigm of "no apps, only agents" for smartphones. There was also talk last year that the next generation of computing platforms could appear in smart glasses, ambient computing devices or reimagined AI smartwatches, taking away from the central role of smartphones and app stores.
But reality presents another possibility: AI is not an “application terminator” but an “application production accelerator”. Data from Appfigures and industry observations point to the same trend - AI-assisted development tools are significantly lowering the threshold for software creation, allowing more creators without traditional programming backgrounds to participate in mobile application development. AI programming tools such as Claude Code and Replit allow people to describe their needs in natural language, and then use AI to generate code, and with ready-made templates and components, they can quickly make online applications. This "AI-assisted app writing" model is bringing a wave of new applications driven by "long-tail creators" to the App Store.
Structurally, this surge in new applications is not evenly distributed across all categories. In the first quarter of 2026, mobile games will still be the category with the largest number of newly launched applications in the world, continuing the dominance of games in the application ecosystem in the past. However, some non-traditional “hot” categories have begun to rise significantly: efficiency applications entered the top five for the first time this year; tool applications rose to second place; “lifestyle” categories jumped from fifth place last year to third place, and health and fitness-related applications constituted the last category in the top five. These changes echo the usage scenarios of AI tools to a certain extent - many creators are trying to use AI to create personal efficiency assistants, gadget collections, life records or habit-forming applications, quickly turning ideas that they "want but are not yet on the market" into products.
While AI has lowered the threshold for creation, it has also put forward higher requirements for the review and security system of app stores. Recently, Apple has experienced two high-profile incidents in the App Store: one is that the reward application Freecash was removed from the shelves due to violation of the rules. The application had been at the top of the list for a long time; the other was that a cryptocurrency application that was counterfeiting Ledger Live was mixed into the store, resulting in the theft of approximately US$9.5 million in crypto assets. In the context of the surge in the number of new applications, these cases have intensified the discussion about the App Store’s review pressure and risk control capabilities.
Apple emphasized that although similar incidents are "huge" in public opinion, they are still a minority in the overall volume. The company has invested a lot of resources in daily operations to filter dangerous or junk applications. According to Apple's previously released 2024 security report, the company removed or rejected more than 17,000 apps within a year due to violations such as "decoy content changes"; more than 320,000 app submissions were rejected due to suspected spam, plagiarism or misleading users; and more than 37,000 potentially fraudulent apps were blocked from entering the store. However, industry commentators such as John Gruber have been calling for years that the App Store still needs a "fraud squad" dedicated to focusing on "popular scam apps" and focusing on monitoring suspicious apps with rapid surges in downloads or revenue.
As AI-assisted development becomes more and more popular, a creative method nicknamed "vibe coding" (writing code by feeling) is spreading: creators start from the perspective of "what kind of experience and atmosphere do I want", and then let AI generate specific implementation details. If this trend is indeed the core driving force behind the current surge in applications, then it is foreseeable that the App Store and the entire mobile software market will be flooded with a larger number of new applications in the future, which include both creative gadgets and more sophisticated scams, phishing, and gray monetization attempts. In the new round of AI-driven “application gold rush”, how to find a balance between encouraging innovation and preventing risks will become a long-term issue faced by platform parties and regulators.