Abandoned Apps Policy continues to remove apps
The controversial policy of abandoned apps continues to give something to talk about. After Google also adopted a very similar policy, it is currently estimated that around 1.5 million applications disappear for both systems.
According to calculations by reports, this represents practically a third of the total number of apps available.
Context on the situation
Although the act of analyzing and discarding applications that have not been updated is a practice that Apple has been carrying out for some time. For example, the company reported a similar situation in 2016. However, in that year, it was a removal of applications that did not meet the current functions of the system.
Apple today warned multiple app developers of the upcoming process. The removal of obsolete or non-functional apps will begin on September 7 for all categories within the App Store. The notice for this purge is stipulated in 30 days from the warning email, although they can also claim to present an update that protects the app from this same email. It should be noted that the applications that force blocking at the time of opening will be automatically deleted.
Therefore, and following the aforementioned stipulations, the elimination of 50,000 applications has already been carried out. Meanwhile Apple closed the warnings on this issue a month ago. The notifications were based on an email from the company with the title “Application Improvement Notice”. Under this notice, “not updated” applications were notified of the possible removal of the App Store for a long time.
Stipulations for removal
Despite the complaints of the developers in this situation, because there are applications that continue to comply with the standards and do not require an immediate update, the purge that will continue is inevitable. This caused Apple to expand the terms in which the removal would take place to be more specific as to the removed apps. In addition to extending the period to protect the application
Apple, in an effort to improve the App Store, notified developers of this event indicating: applications not updated for more than three years and that did not have the required minimum number of downloads within 12 months I would receive email identification.
Note that this is not the first time the company has carried out this purge, so complaints about “new policies” will simply not be heard. This process is just a warning to developers of a policy that was already in place.
Abandoned apps and how this policy is affecting
Recently the calculation of probable applications to elimination has already been done. CNET has made the report. Surprisingly susceptible applications They amount to a third of the total. This combining both systems, both App Store and Play Store. According to Pixalate, which is an analytics company, Apple’s number of abandoned apps is 650,000, while Google still had 869,000.
According to this report, updated applications represent much more. Around 60% were updated in a period that does not exceed two years. This amount represents approximately 3.1 million apps. Naturally, the applications that have the most updates are the most downloaded or those that do so continuously, representing 84%.
This is not exclusive to smartphones, as many apps are also disappearing from the Apple Watch. However, in such a case the problem is the developers abandoning the project completely. For example, Uber who is a renowned brand that disappeared from the Apple Watch. Both Uber and Twitter, Instagram, Hulu, Evernote, Trello, among many other companies that have left their applications for this device.
