The App Store is booming again, and AI may be why.

Everyone said AI would kill apps. Instead, we’re seeing a surge in new app launches.

Global app launches in the first quarter of 2026 were up 60% year-over-year across both the Apple App Store and Google Play, according to new analysis from market intelligence provider AppFigures. Looking at the iOS App Store alone, the percentage was even higher at 80%. As of April 2026, total app launches have increased 104% on both stores and 89% on iOS compared to the same period last year.

Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said in a recent interview: Rumors of the App Store’s demise in the age of AI “may be greatly exaggerated.”

These research results come amid concerns that the emergence of AI chatbots and agents will ultimately lead users to abandon apps. This is a theory already being put forward by industry insiders like Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who is focused on building smartphones for the AI ​​era. The New York Times reported last year on the possibility that new computing platforms, such as smart glasses, peripheral computing devices, or reimagined smartwatches with AI capabilities, may overtake smartphones.

OpenAI is developing AI hardware devices with renowned Apple designer Jony Ive.

But there is also another possibility. AI will drive the rebirth of the App Store by making it easier for anyone to create apps. The new app gold rush can be driven by creators with an idea but no technical skills to design mobile software.

Data from AppFigures shows that certain categories of apps are seeing more new releases than others.

Mobile games continue to account for the majority of new app launches globally as of Q1 2026. But “productivity” apps are in the top five this year. The “Utility” category also rose to second place, and the “Lifestyle” app category rose from fifth place last year to third place. Finally, “health and fitness” style applications were among the top five categories.

The working hypothesis here is that AI-based tools like Claude Code or Replit may be behind the surge in new releases. It also seems likely that we will reach some kind of tipping point in terms of AI usability where it will be easy enough for people to leverage these tools to build the mobile apps they want faster, or even to build their first apps.

The explosion of new apps for Apple to review may be to blame for the tech giant’s latest misstep. This week Apple removed rewards app Freecash from the App Store due to violating its rules. This allowed the app to climb the store’s top charts and stay in the top five for several months. Apple was also caught off guard by a malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of Ledger Live, that drained $9.5 million in cryptocurrency from victims’ accounts.

While high-profile issues like these can bring bad publicity to the App Store, the company is still putting in a lot of effort in terms of blocking and rejecting dangerous or spammy apps. According to Apple’s most recent analysis for 2024, the company removed or rejected more than 17,000 apps for bait-and-switch violations that year. We’ve rejected over 320,000 app submissions that we found to be spam, copies of other apps, or misleading. We’ve taken action to prevent more than 37,000 fraudulent apps from reaching App Store users.

Still, Apple experts like John Gruber have long argued that the App Store needs some kind of “bunko team” to watch for scam or fraudulent apps that become more popular or generate more sales.

If AI-enabled Vibe coding turns out to be behind the recent surge in app launches, the need will only grow as more new apps flood the market. Not all apps will be smooth sailing.