Google’s Play Store lost nearly half its apps

The Play Store lost 1.8 million of the 3.4 million apps it started 2024 with.

The Google Play Store shed 1.8 million apps since the beginning of last year, according to an analysis from Appfigures and reported earlier by TechCrunch. That makes up around 47 percent of the 3.4 million apps it started 2024 with — a decline that Google spokesperson Dan Jackson says reflects the company’s focus on “delivering high-quality apps” and “commitment to continuous improvements for user safety.”

In recent years, Google has ramped up efforts to crack down on spammy and low-quality apps. In 2023, the company started carrying out more thorough app reviews and began requiring developers to test their apps with at least 20 people for two weeks. It began purging apps with “limited functionality and content” last year, and announced in January that it blocked 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published to the Play Store.

The Google Play Store lost 1.8 million apps since the start of 2024.

Image: Appfigures

As shown by data from Appfigures, nearly 200,000 of the titles removed from the Google Play Store were in the “games” category, followed by 160,700 in education, and 115,400 in business. However, Appfigures shows that app releases are up 7.1 percent globally compared to the same time last year.

“Every year, we continue to invest in more ways to protect our community and fight bad actors, so users can trust the apps they download from Google Play and developers can build thriving businesses,” Jackson said in a statement to The Verge.

Though the Google Play Store may have lost a significant number of apps since last year, Appfigures’ data shows Apple’s App Store making a small jump from 1.6 million to 1.64 million apps.

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