App Store Will Hit 5 Million Apps By 2020

Developers can’t seem to stop developing apps.

Mobile apps available for purchase or download through Apple’s App Store are expected to double in size and surpass 5 million by 2020, according to new data released by Sensor Tower, an app intelligence firm.

According to Sensor Tower, the App Store is expected to have about 2.93 million apps by the end of 2016, 3.60 million in 2017, 4.18 million in 2018, 4.67 million in 2019 and 5.06 million by 2020.

When Apple debuted the App Store in 2008, it had about 5,000 by the end of the first year, according to Sensor Tower. By the end of 2015, that figure had swelled to about 1.75 million, and today, there are more than 2 million apps available for download through the App Store.

“According to our projections, the App Store will add an additional 2.13 million apps over the next four years to contain 5.06 million active apps by the end of 2020 — doubling its size as of this report and growing by 73 percent over where we estimate it will be at the end of this year,” according to Sensor Tower.

Games are largely fueling the crazy growth the App Store is experiencing. Of the 48,231 apps that debuted on the App Store in May, almost 21,000 of them were some form of a game (that’s 43 percent). Education, entertainment, business and lifestyle apps were also pretty popular in May, with more than 2,000 from each category debuting in the App Store.