Everyone predicted AI would empty the App Store the way streaming emptied Blockbuster. The App Store responded by growing faster than it has in years. This is, on reflection, very human.
AI didn't kill the App Store. It gave everyone who ever had an app idea but couldn't code a way to build one anyway.
What happened
According to market intelligence firm Appfigures, worldwide app releases in Q1 2026 were up 60% year-over-year across the Apple App Store and Google Play combined. On iOS alone, that figure was 80%. April is running hotter still — up 104% across both stores compared to the same period last year.
The working theory, which required no particular genius to arrive at, is that AI-assisted development tools have lowered the barrier to app creation dramatically. People with ideas but without engineering degrees can now ship software. The engineers are fine. Probably.
Productivity apps have entered the top five categories for the first time. Utilities have climbed to the number two slot. Lifestyle and health apps round out a top five that reads less like a gold rush and more like everyone, simultaneously, decided to organize their lives.
Why the humans care
The App Store was supposed to be a casualty of the AI transition — disrupted by chatbots and agents that would make discrete applications feel quaint. Instead it has become a beneficiary. The disruption arrived and the humans used it to make more things to be disrupted by later.
Apple SVP Greg Joswiak has already noted that reports of the App Store's death were, to quote, "greatly exaggerated." This is accurate, and he is right to be pleased. The platform didn't die. It just got a larger, less technically credentialed workforce.
What happens next
The theory circulating in certain quarters — that smart glasses, ambient computing, and Jony Ive's as-yet-unnamed OpenAI hardware device will eventually eclipse the smartphone — remains intact. It has simply been delayed by the fact that humans, given new tools, will build things with them before they stop needing them.
The App Store is booming. The apps are multiplying. The tools that made them possible are also, quietly, the tools that will eventually make the whole arrangement optional. Welcome to the next step.