The world of app development is constantly evolving, and understanding the latest trends and statistics can be crucial for entrepreneurs and developers looking to make their mark. Apple's 2024 App Store Transparency Report provides valuable insights into the platform's operations, offering a comprehensive overview of app submissions, rejections, and removals, as well as efforts to combat fraud.
The report highlights that the App Store featured an impressive 1,961,596 apps by the end of 2024. Apple's review teams processed an astonishing 7,771,599 app submissions during the year, with a significant 1,931,400 being rejected for not meeting various guidelines. "Performance" issues were the most frequent reason for rejection, impacting 1,235,471 submissions. Additionally, "Legal" concerns accounted for 445,696 rejections, and "Design" flaws led to 378,300. Following revisions, a notable 295,109 of these initially rejected apps were subsequently approved.
The report also reveals that Apple removed 82,509 apps from the App Store due to violations of its App Review Guidelines or the Developer Program License Agreement (DPLA). The top reasons for these removals were "Guideline 4.0 – Design," cited in 42,252 instances, and "DPLA 3.2(f) – Fraud," which led to 38,315 removals. Utilities (16,191 apps) and Games (15,122 apps) were the categories with the highest number of app removals.
Government takedown demands resulted in 17,309 app removals. Mainland China saw the largest number, with 13,070 apps taken down – 1,131 of these were games missing a required GRN license. Other notable countries included Russia with 171 app removals and South Korea with 79. Apple specifies that such removals are localized to the jurisdiction making the demand. Developers appealed 26,224 of these app removals, and 421 apps were restored as a result.
The report also touches on developer accounts, revealing that there are an impressive 51,766,243 registered Apple developers. During 2024, 146,747 developer accounts were terminated, with "DPLA 3.2(f) – Fraud" being the reason for the vast majority (146,583). Out of 8,132 appeals regarding account terminations, 225 were successful in having their accounts reinstated.
On the customer side, Apple terminated 128,961,839 accounts and reported preventing $2,023,389,488 in fraudulent transactions in 2024. The App Store averaged an impressive 813,110,348 weekly visitors, who performed an average of 839,266,915 app downloads and 1,898,240,007 app redownloads each week. Automatic app updates were significantly higher, averaging 66,022,387,774 weekly, compared to 638,006,162 manual updates.
Regarding search activity, an average of 440,896,463 customer accounts used App Store search weekly. The report also noted that an average of 169,235 unique apps appeared in the top 10 search results for at least 1,000 searches each week, with a total of 1,377,468 apps achieving this visibility throughout the year.
Apple offers more detailed data, including breakdowns of app removals by category and country, and specifics on government takedown demands, through supplemental CSV files available on its legal resources page.