Fewer and fewer Android apps: The surprising reason for the decline

The results of a new study are alarming: Google’s Play Store is not exactly empty, but there are around a third fewer Android apps available today. Europe in particular is to blame for this.

Study: A third fewer apps in the Play Store

The selection has become significantly smaller in recent years when it comes to apps for Android phones and tablets. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers from Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and the USA who have observed Google’s Play Store for years. According to the researchers, within a year Number of available apps down by around a third.

While there were still 2.8 million Android apps in the fourth quarter of 2017, the number has fallen by almost a million just one year later. As a reason for the decline could be clear tightened data protection regulations of the European Union are used, which are known in Germany as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A temporal connection is clearly recognizable.

Since mass does not equal class, there is still no reason to worry. On the contrary, more comprehensive data protection regulations have one positive effect on users. Basically, Google just sorted out the apps that didn’t comply with the new rules – or the developers themselves pulled the plug and removed their apps from the Play Store as a precaution. However, it is also clear that more data protection can go hand in hand with higher development costs.

These apps belong on every smartphone:

Play Store: Fewer apps, but more users

For the developers of privacy-compliant apps the cleanup was well worth it. The average number of users per app has increased significantly in the period under review, they say. This in turn translates into higher revenue for app developers (source: The Register).