Main points
- The number of new apps on the App Store skyrocketed by 84% in the first quarter of 2026, driven by advances in artificial intelligence technologies such as “vibe coding.”
- Apple does not fully support this trend and removes apps that do not pass standard moderation due to concerns about quality and security, while developing its own AI solutions.
The App Store is experiencing a new surge – the trend towards creating apps through AI is to blame / Unsplash / James Yarema
The number of new apps in the App Store has increased dramatically after several years of decline. One reason is the trend towards creating apps using artificial intelligence, which has significantly simplified development.
In the first quarter of 2026, 235,800 new apps appeared on the App Store, an 84% increase from the same period last year. Such a sharp jump looks especially noticeable against the background of previous years, when the number of new releases gradually decreased. This is reported by Gizmodo .
How has AI changed the mobile app market?
According to analysts, from 2016 to 2024, the number of new applications in the Apple store decreased by almost 48% . However, in 2025 the situation changed – about 600 thousand new applications were released per year, which means a growth of about 30% on a global scale. In 2026, this trend will only intensify.
One of the key factors has been the so-called ” vibe coding ” approach, in which code is generated by artificial intelligence. The emergence of tools like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex has enabled even people with no programming experience to create applications using ordinary language.
The term “vibe coding” itself was popularized by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in February 2025. By the end of the year, it had become so entrenched that it became the word of the year according to Collins English Dictionary .
The trend quickly caught on not only among enthusiasts but also in business . Company executives saw it as a way to increase productivity and reduce costs, which even raised concerns about the future of professional developers. Stock market investors began to see this approach as a potential threat to traditional IT companies.
At the same time, such applications have many problems . Programs created with the help of AI often contain errors or flaws, which has led to the emergence of a new specialization – developers who are engaged in fixing such products.
Despite the growth in the number of apps, Apple itself is not fully supporting this trend. The company has already removed several popular AI development services from the App Store, including Replit, Vibecode, and Anything . The reason is that they violated the platform's rules.
According to Mashable , Apple's main concern is that such tools allow apps to be created and run on its devices without going through the standard moderation process. This contradicts the company's policies on quality control and security.
At the same time, Apple is developing its own solutions in this area . Its Xcode development environment has received features for autonomous code writing using AI agents that can analyze and edit program code.
As a result , the mobile app market is experiencing a new wave of growth, but at the same time faces challenges in quality, control, and the role of humans in the development process.