TL; DR
- Google deleted almost 115,000 apps from the Play Store in the first half of 2021.
- The total number of Android apps has declined for the first time since 2018.
- Stricter rules for Play Store titles and images are likely to have an impact.
Google removed nearly 115,000 apps from the Play Store in the first half of 2021, marking the first significant drop in the total number of Android apps in three years.
More than 58,000 apps were removed between January and April, according to SafeBettingSites, and around 65,000 apps disappeared in May alone, citing data from Google and analytics companies like App Annie, AppBrain and Statista. There are now north of 2.8 million apps on the Play Store, up from 3 million in September 2020. The last big drop came in 2018 when the total dropped from a high of 3.6 million to 2.8 million.
The reason for the increase in distances in May 2021 is believed to be a comprehensive set of new rules that Google announced at the end of April to block apps with misleading names and images. Developers were prevented, for example, from embellishing titles with advertising messages or even from exceeding 30 characters.
Controlling the quality of Play Store titles is a long-standing and seemingly persistent problem. The updated rules are still not aimed directly at developers producing low quality clones or, in some cases, fake apps that don’t work. The latter can be reported, but the easy-money appeal can lead to new apps slipping in to replace what Google is removing.
The Play Store reportedly recorded 56.2 billion downloads in the first half of 2021, up 6% year-over-year, while Sensor Tower’s data showed a 30% increase in revenue to $ 23.4 billion. However, Google is still lagging far behind Apple on the financial front as it has made an estimated $ 41.5 billion in revenue from the 1H21 App Store with far fewer apps in the market.