The App Store Just Logged Its Biggest Release Year in Nearly a Decade
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - A New Era for Shopping Apps. Check out the full article for more insights.
After years of decline, 2025 marks a dramatic reversal: the App Store is experiencing its biggest wave of new app releases since 2016. The catalyst? A perfect storm of AI-powered development tools, proven monetization models, and viral growth channels that are bringing a new generation of developers into the ecosystem.
According to Appfigures Explorer, Apple's App Store saw 557K new app submissions in 2025, a whopping 24% increase from 2024, and the first meaningful increase since 2016's all-time high of 1M apps.
But this isn't just about quantity... The nature of who's building and why they're building has fundamentally changed.
To understand why this matters, you need to understand what came before. After hitting all-time highs in 2016 with over 1 million new apps, releases began a steady decline. By 2017, submissions dropped to 731K and just a year later the number dropped to just 474K - less than half the peak!
The App Store had matured. Categories became crowded. Discovery got harder. The early land-grab opportunities were gone, and aspiring developers looked at the market and decided the odds weren't in their favor.
Then covid hit.
The pandemic triggered a temporary surge in app development. With people stuck at home, developers had time. With entire industries going digital overnight, they had motivation. Remote work tools, fitness apps, movie streaming, education platforms, and many others suddenly became essential.
Releases jumped to 491K in 2020, but the boost was modest and short-lived. By 2022 the world strated reopening and the momentum dropped sending releases down to 434K, and by 2023 they hit a low of 424K, the lowest point since 2012.
But then things changed. 2024 saw a modest recovery to 448K new apps, and 2025's jump to 557K represents something I believe is entirely different.
So what changed?
1. AI and Vibe Coding Make Development Accessible
LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude, and tools like Cursor and Replit have lowered the technical barriers to app development, so non-technical founders can now "vibe code" their way to functional apps in days, not months.
It doesn't mean these apps are competitive on features or experience, but they are going into the App Store nevertheless.
2. TikTok Proved Viral Growth Is Real
A new generation of apps figured out how to crack TikTok and Instagram as legitimate growth channels. Apps that no one heard of before generated millions of downloads and rose to the top of the App Store seemingly ovenight thanks creator partnerships and UGC that actually converts.
This isn't paid ads. It's organic, viral, performance-driven distribution that's been proven to be reachable for indie developers and small teams.
I'm not saying it's easy, but it's possible.
3. Subscriptions Actually Make Money
With subscriptions, developers aren't just launching apps, they're launching sustainable businesses.
The subscription model, once reserved for giants, has proven it works for most apps, even the indie ones. And even though optimizing subscription revenue at the level of greats like Tinder is still very hard, generating a sustainable income isn't.
You can build an app with AI, get it in front of potential users via ASO and TikTok, convert them into recurring revenue, and have a profitable business within months. That's a formula that didn't work as well five years ago.
What This Means
There's a renesaince in the App Store that's purely based on the potential for success. The 2025 surge isn't a flash in the pan. It's the result of several different opportunities funneling into the App Store, making app development viable for an entirely new class of entrepreneur.
FYI - This analysis focuses specifically on Apple's App Store. Google Play tells a very different story—one I'll dive into in a future article so make sure you're subscribed to the newsletter.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
