Google and Apple recently announced plans to remove old applications from their respective app marketplaces. Both businesses agreed to delete any apps that had not been updated in two years last month.
In early April, Google revealed a two-year cutoff plan that would take effect in November, while Apple began emailing developers later that month, offering them 30 days to upgrade or be deleted. It’s difficult to predict how culling two-year-old applications will go, so how many apps are getting the axe?
Apple has not given a solid deadline
According to CNET, the two-year threshold would eliminate 869,000 applications from Google Play and about 650,000 from the App Store, according to statistics from research firm Pixalate.
That figure is an estimate since Google has said that the cutoff threshold is two years. Apple has not stated a cutoff point publicly.
The business has only directly addressed developers, stating that programs that have not been updated in a substantial length of time would be removed, while other developers have put this timeframe at two years.
There will be collateral damage
Both app store operators have a strong case to make: outdated programs are of lesser quality and more vulnerable to attacks. Many developers believe that taking this technique will result in collateral damage.
Not all two-year-old apps are defective, and not all apps offer a live service that will be updated indefinitely. Such a concept does not work for a free project either.
According to the Pixalate report, 68% of applications on both stores, or more than 3.1 million apps, have been updated in the previous two years. Apps that were updated more regularly had considerably more downloads: 84% of apps with over 100 million downloads had been updated in the previous six months.
4 hours ago
