The Apple App Store and Google Play are wastelands littered with abandoned apps, according to a new study.
Developers are abandoning apps faster than ever before, with over 1.8 million available apps sitting dormant. These “abandoned” apps are defined by Pixalate’s new Abandoned Mobile Apps Report as those that haven’t been updated for at least two years.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, 1.86 million abandoned apps sat across both stores, up 3 per cent year-on-year.
In addition, there are 348,000 “super-abandoned’’ apps that haven’t been updated for more than five years.
The Google Play Store is the biggest wasteland, being home to over 1.3 million of these abandoned apps, up 12 per cent year-on-year. The Apple App Store accounts for 496,000 – a figure that is down 2 per cent, due to Apple’s continued sweeping of these dormant apps.
Percentage-wise, abandoned apps make up 38 per cent of all apps available in the US, 40 per cent of those registered in China, and 45 per cent of Russian apps.
Huawei’s Mobile Services app, which currently has more than 500 million downloads, is the most high-profile abandoned app.