According to a new study, there are currently more outdated apps on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store than those that are frequently updated.
Analysis firm Pixalate’s study, The Abandoned Mobile Apps Report, shows that Apple’s recent announcement that it will soon begin deleting apps that have not been updated for some time has a lot of sense despite the fact that it wasn’t. t well received by the developers.
To compile its report, Pixalate scoured both the App Store and the Play Store for what it deemed to be discontinued apps or those that had gone two or more years without being updated. The analytics firm found more than 1.5 million abandoned apps among the more than five million apps it reviewed.
While both mobile app stores are filled with discontinued apps, Pixalate only found 1.3 million recently updated apps that had been updated within the last six months.
Removing outdated apps
Although outdated apps pose a significant security risk to end users, there is no need to worry as both Apple and Google intend to take action on this.
For example, Apple recently updated its App Store policy to classify apps that have gone three years without updates as discontinued. The iPhone maker said it will start removing them and apps that have failed to reach a certain number of downloads over the past year.
Once Apple marks an app as deprecated, its developers have 90 days to make changes to the app in question before it’s removed from the App Store. However, outdated apps will only be removed from the company store and not from users’ devices.
Meanwhile, Google announced in April that it would start phasing out outdated Android apps at the end of this year. Unlike Apple, the search giant will hide app pages and block installs on Android smartphones running a mobile operating system version two or more years old from the app’s target API level.
If you are an app developer who hasn’t updated your apps for a while, now would be the time to do so before they get removed from the App Store or Play Store.
Through the register