Apple App Store deals with greatest ‘zombie’ app horde to date

2 Feb 2015

The number of ‘zombie’ apps that are appearing on the Apple App Store have reached their highest level ever, according to a new report, accounting for nearly 83pc of all apps on the store.

Contrary to what you might initially believe, this is not a cyber-security issue with a high-rate of transmission of computer viruses, but rather the number of apps on the App Store which never break into the list of the top 300 apps at any given time.

Given the vast number of apps released and developed by individuals, groups or companies, the only way someone is likely to stumble across an app outside the top-300 is if they’re looking for something very specific, which is a rare occurrence.

According to the report from app analysts Adjust, in the space of a year the number of apps on the Apple market has surpassed the 1m mark growing from 890,000 at the beginning of 2014, to 1.42m at the end of January.

Zombie-apps-chart

Zombieapps chart via Adjust

Business apps the worst offenders

In 2014, the percentage of apps released that were effectively failures fell just under two-thirds of the entire catalogue, which has now increased by just under 10pc again in the space of a year.

Delving further into their figures, it would appear that from Apple’s list of categories for apps, business apps have the highest rate of zombies in its ranks with 91pc of 175,666 apps created in the space of a year falling to the wayside.

Meanwhile, weather apps show the most up-take in the App Store, percentage-wise, with half of the 4,005 apps becoming zombies.

Games were considered worthy of their own category in the Adjust report showing a substantial number of arcade games never seeing the light of day with 89.1pc of the 60,000-plus games with Plants vs Zombies ironically not included in this number.

Zombie sign image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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