App Store Experiences New Launch Boom — Appfigures Links Growth to AI Development Tools

App Store is experiencing a new growth phase: the number of new apps in 2026 has surged sharply, and the analytics platform Appfigures has recorded launch levels comparable to the peak years of the smartphone boom. The main hypothesis is that AI development tools have dramatically lowered the entry barrier for anyone who wanted to create a mobile product but couldn't afford it before. Appfigures — one of the key platforms for monitoring App Store and Google Play — tracks metrics for hundreds of thousands of apps daily.

According to their latest data, in the first months of 2026, the number of new apps appearing in the stores surged upward. The trend spans both Apple's iOS ecosystem and the Android segment. The main explanation is AI.

Over the past year, tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and similar AI assistants for code writing have become mainstream. They allow experienced engineers to accelerate development by several times, and people without deep technical training to create full-fledged applications from scratch. Where it once took a team of three to five people for several months, now a single developer can deliver in a couple of weeks.

This is not the only factor. In parallel, the number of no-code and low-code platforms has grown, which increasingly use AI to automatically generate logic, interfaces, and marketing materials. The entry barrier has dropped so much that entrepreneurs and small teams who previously couldn't afford to hire developers now create applications on their own.

This shift is especially noticeable in niches where specialized tools were previously lacking: local services, utilities for specific professions, narrow B2B solutions. Historically, the App Store experienced several waves of growth. The first was the early iPhone years, when developers rushed to occupy the new platform.

The second was the boom in social networks and media. The third, in 2013-2015, was the gaming boom. In recent years, growth has slowed: the stores are saturated, competition for attention is fierce, and development costs remained high.

Based on Appfigures' data, a fourth wave is beginning — under the banner of AI. What does this mean for the market? Competition in the App Store will grow even more: if creating apps has become cheaper and faster, then the number of products competing for users will also increase.

Only those who solve a real problem and provide quality UX will survive — cloning others' ideas with AI is no longer enough. Apple will receive higher commission revenue. For independent developers and small studios, a new window of opportunity opens.

The boom in AI development tools is software creation democratization in action. If the trend holds, we stand at the beginning of a new cycle, where the key competitive advantage will not be the ability to write code, but the ability to choose the right problem to solve.