In Q1 2026, the number of apps submitted to the Apple App Store reached 235.8k in a single quarter, a year-over-year increase of 84%.

The widespread adoption of AI has significantly lowered the barriers to app development.
In the foreseeable future, app supply will be almost unlimited.
However, users' time and the traffic available to reach them are limited.
During the Vibe Coding era, solo OPC companies are rushing into the red ocean of startups, everyone is manually building their own apps.
Eventually, they realize that most of the revenue is still being taken by traffic portals like Xiaohongshu, which capture the majority of the profits.
If we also consider the high "Apple tax,"
the costs of creating products and software may have decreased, but the difficulty and competition in distribution could be much greater than the savings in development costs.