The App Store reached enormous scale in 2024: its ecosystem facilitated nearly $1.3 trillion in billings and sales worldwide, while weekly activity included more than 839 million app downloads and almost 1.9 billion redownloads. The figures below show how discovery, distribution, review, developer participation, and enforcement fit together.
Contents
- App Store scale and economic activity
- Weekly visitors, downloads, and updates
- Search visibility and the size of the catalog
- App submissions and review outcomes
- App removals by category and reason
- Government takedowns and developer accounts
- Customer accounts and fraud prevention
App Store scale and economic activity
Apple’s June 2025 Global App Store ecosystem report estimated that the App Store ecosystem facilitated nearly $1.3 trillion in billings and sales worldwide in 2024. This is an ecosystem-wide figure for the calendar year, rather than a measure of Apple’s commission revenue.
More than 90% of those 2024 billings and sales accrued without any commission paid to Apple, according to the same Apple Global App Store ecosystem report. The distinction matters when interpreting the headline value: the reported total describes economic activity facilitated through the ecosystem, not money retained by the platform.
The App Store also operated at a scale where small weekly changes could represent millions of interactions. The 2024 App Store Transparency Report recorded an average of 813,110,348 App Store visitors per week worldwide. That weekly average provides a useful view of recurring reach, while the economic estimate captures activity across the full year.
Weekly visitors, downloads, and updates
The 2024 App Store Transparency Report shows that app distribution was only one part of the platform’s weekly workload. Average weekly app downloads reached 839,266,915 worldwide in 2024. Average weekly app redownloads were considerably higher at 1,898,240,007, indicating that re-installation activity was a major part of overall app delivery.
Updates represented an even larger volume. Automatic app updates averaged 66,022,387,774 per week in 2024, while manual app updates averaged 638,006,162 per week. These are separate measures: automatic updates reflect background or system-managed updating, and manual updates reflect customer-initiated update activity as reported in the transparency data.
| Weekly App Store activity in 2024 | Worldwide average |
|---|---|
| Visitors | 813,110,348 |
| App downloads | 839,266,915 |
| App redownloads | 1,898,240,007 |
| Automatic app updates | 66,022,387,774 |
| Manual app updates | 638,006,162 |
| Customer accounts searching | 440,896,463 |
The report also counted an average of 440,896,463 customer accounts searching the App Store each week. Search therefore operated alongside browsing and direct distribution as a central discovery route. These values are weekly averages for 2024, not counts of unique people over the entire year; one account can appear in repeated weekly activity.
Search visibility and the size of the catalog
The App Store had 1,961,596 total apps in 2024, according to the 2024 App Store Transparency Report. Within that catalog, an average of 169,235 apps per week appeared in the top 10 results of at least 1,000 searches. Across the year, 1,377,468 total apps appeared in the top 10 results of at least 1,000 searches.
These three figures describe different layers of visibility. The total catalog is a point-in-time inventory measure in the report. The weekly top-results figure describes recurring search exposure. The annual total captures the broader set of apps that reached the stated search-result threshold at some point during the year. They should not be added together or treated as unique annual audiences.
Search activity also needs to be read beside the 440,896,463 average weekly customer accounts searching the store. A large search population and a large catalog create a competitive discovery environment, while the 169,235 weekly top-result figure shows that only a subset of apps reached the report’s high-volume search criterion in an average week.
App submissions and review outcomes
Apple reviewed 7,771,599 app submissions in 2024, according to the 2024 App Store Transparency Report. Of those submissions, 1,931,400 were rejected. The report also recorded 295,109 apps approved after rejection, a separate outcome showing that rejection was not always the final disposition for a submission.
Apple’s May 2025 App Store fraud analysis gives additional context for the review process. It says that over 7.7 million App Store submissions were reviewed in 2024 and more than 1.9 million were rejected. Those rounded figures align directionally with the more precise transparency-report counts, but they should be kept as separate source statements rather than combined into a new calculation.
The fraud analysis also says that submissions rejected for privacy violations exceeded 400,000 in 2024. More than 320,000 submissions were rejected for spam, copycats, or misleading users. These are reported thresholds, not exact counts, so the appropriate interpretation is “more than” or “exceeded,” not a precise total.
The scale of review is notable beside the 1,961,596 total apps in the store. Submission reviews represent activity entering or changing the catalog during the year, while the total-app figure describes the catalog itself. They measure different stages of the platform and should not be used as a direct approval-rate calculation without additional definitions.
App removals by category and reason
The 2024 App Store Transparency Report recorded 82,509 apps removed from the App Store. Utility apps accounted for 16,191 removals and games accounted for 15,122. Lifestyle apps represented 6,202 removals, followed by business apps at 6,042 and entertainment apps at 5,484.
Other reported category counts included 5,295 education apps, 4,873 productivity apps, 3,948 Food & Drink apps, 2,976 shopping apps, and 2,546 finance apps removed in 2024.
| App category | Removals in 2024 |
|---|---|
| Utility | 16,191 |
| Games | 15,122 |
| Lifestyle | 6,202 |
| Business | 6,042 |
| Entertainment | 5,484 |
| Education | 5,295 |
| Productivity | 4,873 |
| Food & Drink | 3,948 |
| Shopping | 2,976 |
| Finance | 2,546 |
The report also identified removal counts by policy or rule. Apps removed due to Guideline 4.0 - Design totaled 42,252 in 2024. Removals under DPLA 3.2(f) - Fraud totaled 38,315. Much smaller reported counts included 425 for DPLA 6.3 - Intellectual Property Infringement, 294 for Guideline 4.3.0 - Spam, and 285 for DPLA 4.8 - Export Control.
Additional rule-level removals were 128 under Guideline 4.1.0 - Copycats, 99 under Guideline 5.6.0 - Developer Code of Conduct, 89 under Guideline 5.0.0 - General, 77 under Guideline 5.2.1 - Intellectual Property - General, and 69 under Guideline 3.1.2 - Subscriptions.
The category and policy lists are different classifications. A category count describes the type of app removed, while a rule count describes the stated basis for removal. The available figures do not establish a one-to-one mapping between the two lists, so they should not be summed into a new breakdown of the 82,509 total.
Government takedowns and developer accounts
Apps removed from the App Store subject to government takedown demands totaled 1,730 in 2024, according to the 2024 App Store Transparency Report. China mainland accounted for 1,307 of those government-demand removals. Russia accounted for 171, South Korea for 79, Ukraine for 55, and Jordan for 50.
| Location | Government-demand removals in 2024 |
|---|---|
| China mainland | 1,307 |
| Russia | 171 |
| South Korea | 79 |
| Ukraine | 55 |
| Jordan | 50 |
The listed locations do not represent every location in the report; they are the supplied country or region figures. The geography is important because government-demand removals are a distinct subset of total app removals, not an alternative count of all enforcement actions.
The developer side of the ecosystem was also large. The App Store had 51,766,243 registered Apple developers in 2024. Terminated developer accounts reached 146,747, while developer-account appeals reached 8,132. Developer-account restorations reached 225.
These counts describe account actions during 2024 and should not be interpreted as a simple flow from termination to appeal to restoration. The supplied figures do not state whether appeals relate only to 2024 terminations or include earlier cases, so no conversion rate is inferred here.
Customer accounts and fraud prevention
Terminated customer accounts reached 128,961,839 in 2024, according to the 2024 App Store Transparency Report. This is a customer-account enforcement measure and is distinct from terminated developer accounts, which totaled 146,747. The two figures should not be combined because they refer to different account populations and enforcement contexts.
The report also recorded $2,023,389,488 in fraudulent transactions prevented in 2024. This is a prevented-transaction value, not a claim that the same amount was lost, recovered, or paid out. It is best read as a measure of intervention attributed to fraud prevention during the reporting period.
The account and fraud figures complement the submission-review data. Review controls address apps entering or changing the store, developer-account actions address platform participation, customer-account actions address user accounts, and prevented-transaction value describes financial intervention. Together, the measures show several separate layers of App Store integrity activity without implying that one layer explains another.
Taken as a whole, the 2024 data portrays an App Store with nearly two million apps, hundreds of millions of weekly searching accounts, billions of weekly downloads and redownloads, and tens of billions of automatic updates. Its governance workload was similarly broad: 7,771,599 submissions reviewed, 82,509 apps removed, 51,766,243 registered developers recorded, and more than $2.0 billion in fraudulent transactions prevented, with each figure tied to its own measurement definition and reporting source.