Mobile app development operates at enormous global scale. Apple reported 1,961,596 apps on the App Store in 2024, while its ecosystem facilitated nearly $1.3 trillion in billings and sales. At the same time, GSMA reported 4.7 billion mobile internet users at the end of 2023. These figures describe an industry with a large addressable audience, intense platform review, and substantial commercial activity.
Contents
- App Store size and review activity
- Removal, compliance, and government requests
- Developers, discovery, and app usage
- App Store billings and growth
- The U.S. mobile app economy
- Global mobile access and economic impact
- Android and cross-platform safety
App Store size and review activity
Apple’s 2024 App Store Transparency Report recorded 1,961,596 total apps. During the same calendar year, Apple reviewed 7,771,599 app submissions. It rejected 1,931,400 submissions, and 295,109 submissions were approved after an earlier rejection. The report also recorded 82,509 apps removed from the App Store.
The rejection figures show how much review activity sits behind the visible catalog. Performance was the largest rejection category, with 1,235,471 submissions. Legal issues accounted for 445,696 rejections, while Design accounted for 378,300. Business rejections totaled 209,845, and Safety rejections totaled 116,105. The Other category accounted for 23,659 submissions.
| App Store review measure | 2024 figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total apps | 1,961,596 | 2024 App Store Transparency Report |
| Submissions reviewed | 7,771,599 | 2024 App Store Transparency Report |
| Submissions rejected | 1,931,400 | 2024 App Store Transparency Report |
| Approved after rejection | 295,109 | 2024 App Store Transparency Report |
| Apps removed | 82,509 | 2024 App Store Transparency Report |
For developers, the category distribution identifies several points of scrutiny. Performance led by a wide margin. Legal and design review were also substantial, while business and safety review formed smaller but still large groups in the report. These are counts of submissions, not a rate for individual developers or apps.
Removal, compliance, and government requests
The 2024 App Store Transparency Report listed Utilities as the largest app-removal category, with 16,191 apps removed. Games followed with 15,122, then Lifestyle with 6,202 and Business with 6,042. Entertainment accounted for 5,484 removals, Education for 5,295, and Productivity for 4,873.
Other reported category totals included 3,948 Food & Drink apps, 2,976 Shopping apps, and 2,546 Finance apps removed. The category figures describe removals during 2024 and should not be read as the total number of apps in each category.
Apple also reported removal citations by guideline or policy reference. Guideline 4.0 Design accounted for 42,252 citations, while DPLA 3.2(f) Fraud accounted for 38,315. DPLA 6.3 Intellectual Property Infringement accounted for 425 citations, Guideline 4.3.0 Spam for 294, and DPLA 4.8 Export Control for 285.
Smaller reported citation counts included 128 for Guideline 4.1.0 Copycats, 99 for Guideline 5.6.0 Developer Code of Conduct, 89 for Guideline 5.0.0 General, 77 for Guideline 5.2.1 Intellectual Property—General, and 69 for Guideline 3.1.2 Subscriptions. These citations are policy-reference counts, not a complete ranking of every enforcement action.
Government takedown demands totaled 17,309 in 2024. China mainland accounted for 13,070 demands. The report listed 171 from Russia, 79 from South Korea, 55 from Ukraine, and 50 from Jordan. India accounted for 34, Egypt for 9, Indonesia for 9, and Türkiye for 8.
The remaining country figures were 3 demands from Switzerland, 2 from Pakistan, and 1 each from Argentina, Azerbaijan, and Malaysia. These measurements are government takedown demands reported by Apple for 2024, rather than an estimate of all content restrictions worldwide.
Developers, discovery, and app usage
Apple registered 51,766,243 total Apple developers in the 2024 App Store Transparency Report. It terminated 146,747 developer accounts during the year and recorded 8,132 appeals of terminated accounts. Apple restored 225 terminated developer accounts after appeal.
The report also recorded 128,961,839 customer accounts terminated in 2024. In fraud prevention, Apple said it prevented $2,023,389,488 in fraudulent transactions. In a separate U.S. ecosystem report, Apple said the App Store prevented more than $9 billion in fraudulent transactions over the last five years. The periods differ, so these figures should not be combined.
Average weekly activity illustrates the scale at which mobile apps are discovered and maintained. Apple reported 813,110,348 average weekly App Store visitors and 440,896,463 average weekly customer accounts searching the App Store. Average weekly app downloads reached 839,266,915, while average weekly redownloads reached 1,898,240,007.
Updates were even larger in volume. Average weekly automatic app updates reached 66,022,387,774, and average weekly manual updates reached 638,006,162. Apple also reported 169,235 average weekly apps appearing in the top 10 results of at least 1,000 searches. Across the report’s total measure, 1,377,468 apps appeared in the top 10 results of at least 1,000 searches.
These figures are weekly averages where stated, not annual totals. They also cover different kinds of activity: visitors, searching accounts, downloads, redownloads, updates, and search-result appearances are separate measures.
App Store billings and growth
The report titled The Global App Store and Its Growth said the global App Store ecosystem facilitated nearly $1.3 trillion in billings and sales in 2024. Of that total, $131 billion, or 10%, came from digital goods and services. Physical goods and services contributed $1,014 billion, or 78%, while in-app advertising contributed $150 billion, or 12%.
Apple said it collected no commission on more than 90% of the $1.3 trillion in global billings and sales. The ecosystem grew from $514 billion in 2019 to $1.295 trillion in 2024. The source reported that global digital goods and services billings and sales rose 109% from 2019 to 2024, while physical goods and services rose 162%.
Several app-enabled categories also grew over that five-year period. General retail rose 162%, travel rose 137%, food delivery and pickup rose 222%, and ride hailing rose 334%. Grocery rose 57%, digital payment spending rose 241%, and in-app advertising revenue rose 131%.
| Global App Store ecosystem measure | 2019–2024 result or 2024 amount | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total ecosystem in 2024 | $1.295 trillion | The Global App Store and Its Growth |
| Total ecosystem in 2019 | $514 billion | The Global App Store and Its Growth |
| Digital goods and services in 2024 | $131 billion; 10% | The Global App Store and Its Growth |
| Physical goods and services in 2024 | $1,014 billion; 78% | The Global App Store and Its Growth |
| In-app advertising in 2024 | $150 billion; 12% | The Global App Store and Its Growth |
| Ride hailing growth | 334% | The Global App Store and Its Growth |
| Food delivery and pickup growth | 222% | The Global App Store and Its Growth |
The category growth figures are changes between 2019 and 2024, while the dollar figures are 2024 ecosystem amounts. They are best used as indicators of changing app-mediated economic activity rather than as a forecast.
The U.S. mobile app economy
The source titled App Store in the U.S. facilitated $406B in developer billings and sales in 2024 reported $406 billion in U.S. developer billings and sales through the App Store ecosystem in 2024. The U.S. ecosystem nearly tripled from $142 billion in 2019 to $406 billion in 2024.
U.S. physical goods and services billings and sales reached $277 billion in 2024. U.S. in-app advertising reached $75 billion, and digital goods and services reached $53 billion. Apple reported that U.S. physical goods and services spending more than tripled since 2019, while spending on digital goods and services more than doubled. U.S. in-app advertising also more than doubled since 2019.
Within the reported U.S. trends, general retail spending and grocery delivery each increased more than fourfold since 2019. U.S. small developers’ earnings increased 76% between 2021 and 2024. These growth statements use the periods specified by Apple and do not establish a single growth rate for every developer or app category.
U.S. developers can list apps in 175 countries and regions. Apps from U.S. developers ranked among the five most-downloaded apps in 170 of those 175 App Store storefronts. Apple also said it supports more than 2.9 million jobs across the U.S. through its ecosystem.
Development infrastructure and training were part of the same U.S. account. Apple said it offers developers more than 250,000 APIs across frameworks including HealthKit, Metal, Core ML, MapKit, and SwiftUI. The Apple Developer Academy in Detroit trained over 1,200 students since 2021, and more than 900 students participated in the Apple Foundation Program at the Detroit academy and Henry Ford College.
The U.S. source also said Apple rejected 1.9 million app submissions in 2024 for security, reliability, and user-experience issues. This is a rounded figure from that source, while the 2024 App Store Transparency Report gives the more precise figure of 1,931,400 rejected submissions.
Global mobile access and economic impact
The GSMA report The Mobile Economy 2024 said 5.6 billion people subscribed to a mobile service by the end of 2023, equal to 69% of the global population. It reported 4.7 billion mobile internet users, or 58% of the world’s population, at the end of 2023.
Mobile technologies and services generated 5.4% of global GDP in 2023 and $5.7 trillion in economic value added. The mobile industry supported around 35 million jobs that year. These figures describe the broader mobile economy, including more than app development alone.
The same GSMA reporting identified a substantial access gap. Around 3 billion people lived in areas covered by mobile broadband networks but did not use mobile internet. A later source, New GSMA report shows mobile internet connectivity continues to grow globally but barriers for 3.45 billion unconnected people remain, said 3.45 billion people still did not use mobile internet in 2024, equal to 43% of the global population.
GSMA estimated that bringing those 3.45 billion people online would be worth $3.5 trillion to the global economy during 2023–2030. It said 90% of that impact would benefit low- and middle-income countries. The same source reported that one in five mobile internet subscribers still used 3G smartphones or feature phones.
The 2023 and 2024 GSMA figures use different reporting periods and should be kept separate. Together, they show both the scale of the current mobile audience and the number of people who remain outside mobile internet use.
Android and cross-platform safety
Google’s report How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024 said Google Play and Android ecosystem safety efforts prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2024. Google also banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish harmful apps during that year.
The following year’s source, How Google Play and Android app ecosystems stayed safe in 2025, reported that Google prevented 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being published in its 2025 safety reporting. It also said Google banned more than 80,000 bad developer accounts in that 2025 reporting.
The 2024 and 2025 Google figures come from separate annual safety reports, so they should not be treated as a continuous series without accounting for changes in reporting or scope. They do, however, quantify the scale of automated and platform-level enforcement relevant to teams building, publishing, and maintaining mobile applications.