The App Store is booming again, and artificial intelligence may be the reason

Everyone said AI would kill apps. Instead, new app launches are on the rise.

According to new analysis from the market intelligence provider Application formsglobal app releases in Q1 2026 rose 60% year over year across both the Apple App Store and Google Play. This percentage was 80% higher when looking at the iOS App Store alone. In April 2026 to date, the total number of app releases is up 104% in both stores compared to the same period last year, and by 89% on iOS.

As Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Greg “Goose” Joswiak, quipped: Recent interview: Rumors about the death of the App Store in the age of artificial intelligence may be “greatly exaggerated.”

These findings come amid concerns that the rise of chatbots and AI agents will eventually lead users to turn away from the apps – a theory that has already been floated by those in the industry. Like Nothing CEO Carl Peiwhich focuses on building a smartphone for the age of artificial intelligence. New York Times It also reported last year on the potential for new computing platforms to outperform smartphones, such as smart glasses, ambient computing devices, or smartwatches reimagined with AI features.

OpenAI is equal Working on an artificial intelligence device With famous Apple designer Jony Ive.

But there’s another possibility, too: AI will make it easier for anyone to create apps, leading to the rebirth of the App Store. The new app gold rush can be led by creators with ideas but not the technical skills to design mobile software.

Appfigures data indicates that certain categories of apps are seeing more new releases than others.

Mobile games still account for the majority of new app releases worldwide as of Q1 2026, as has been the case in previous years. But “productivity” apps moved into the top five this year. The “Utilities” category also moved to #2, and the “Lifestyle” apps category rose from #5 last year to #3 now. Finally, “Health & Fitness” style apps completed the top five categories.

The working hypothesis here is that AI-powered tools, like Claude Code or Replit, could be behind the wave of new launches. It also seems possible that we are reaching a tipping point in terms of ease of use of AI, where it will be easier for people to leverage these tools to create desired mobile apps more quickly – or even create their first apps ever.

The explosion of new apps that Apple has to review could also be to blame for some of the tech giant’s recent missteps. this week, Apple has pulled its rewards app Freecash from the App Store For rule violations, after allowing the app to rise to the top of the store’s charts and sit in the top five for several months. Apple was also surprised by the malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of the Ledger Live app $9.5 million worth of cryptocurrencies drained From the victims’ accounts

While high-profile issues like this can lead to bad PR for the App Store, the company still does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to blocking and rejecting dangerous or unwanted apps. Apple Latest analysis from 2024 It said the company removed or rejected more than 17,000 apps for bait-and-switch violations that year; Rejected more than 320,000 submitted applications that were found to be spam, copy other applications, or misleading; It has taken measures to prevent more than 37,000 potentially fraudulent applications from reaching users on the App Store.

However, Apple experts, like John Gruber, do He argued for a long time That app store needs A “bunko squad” is a type that monitors fraudulent or fraudulent applications that are gaining popularity or generating high profits.

If AI-powered dynamic programming turns out to be the reason behind the recent boom in app releases, this need will only grow as more new apps flood into the market, and not all of them will be benign.