Apple’s App Store Shrank for First Time in 2017 Thanks to Quality Crackdown

According to a new report from TechCrunch, the number of available apps on the App Store shrank for the first time ever in 2017.

The numbers were shared today by App Store analytics company Appfigures. At the end of 2017, there were a total of 2.1 million apps available on the iOS App Store, which compares to 2.2 million at the beginning of 2017.

In September 2016, Apple told developers that it would start removing outdated apps from the App Store that did not keep up with the company’s guidelines. The company also created new guidelines that limiting developers from creating apps from commercialized templates or app generation services.

Apple stopped supporting 32-bit apps in iOS 11, and this has had the biggest impact so far on the number of apps that were pulled from the App Store.

Appfigures also noted that the decrease in apps could be contributed to a dip in the number of new apps submitted by developers in 2017. Only 755,000 apps were added to the App Store in 2017, down 29 percent from the previous year.

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