Are you frequently frustrated by the sheer number of sub-par, ancient, under-developed apps on the App Store? Well, so is Apple – the company promised to clear out old and defunct apps from the iOS App Store earlier this year, and has now significantly ramped up the pace. The average number of apps removed in a month is around 14,000, but in October, over three times as many bit the dust – app intelligence company Sensor Tower has noted that 47,300 apps were removed.
Apple initially gave developers a deadline of September 7 to update their apps, but they didn’t appear to take immediate action. However, this new data shows they might be on their way.
Digging deeper, the report says 28 percent were games – the largest category in both the App Store, and in total number of deleted apps. It’s followed by Entertainment, Books, Education and Lifestyle which range from 6-9 percent of deletions.
So, what does this mean for users? There might be a significant number of users using old apps that haven’t been deleted for awhile, but the number is unlikely to be significant. If you think you are using older apps then you can check by looking up the app on the App Store, which tells you when it was last updated. Apple’s rules for developers aren’t clear but there’s a good chance that if it hasn’t been updated for a couple of years, it might be on its way out.
This means that users won’t be able to download the app anymore, but if it’s on the device, it won’t disappear. However, if users backup to the Cloud and need to restore, then they won’t get the app back as apps are restored from the App Store. The only way around this is to back up and restore via iTunes if you need to. Here’s how.