Google Play Store has witnessed a 47 per cent reduction in its app count owing to the adoption of sterner policies that pay more attention to quality, security, and user trust.

The major overhaul saw the store remove millions of malfunctioning, low-quality, and static apps for violating its policies with some developer accounts also experiencing total bans.

The Google Play Store previously housed up to 3.4 million apps touching on varied categories with the significant overhaul only leaving 1.8 million apps on the Play Store.

App Decline Explained

The significant move was occasioned by a major policy change by the Play Store that resulted in the momentous dip in the total apps available from 2024 to early 2025.

In July 2024, Google announced stricter Play Store policies then cracked down on all low-quality and possibly malicious apps in a bid to enhance the quality of apps on Android.

Previously developers were permitted to submit their apps in a lenient and automated process devoid of testing, oversight and quality checks but this is now a thing of the past.

Google will now employ Advanced AI threat detection that saw 2.36 million apps blocked and more than 158,000 developer accounts banned to enhance user experience and safety.

The massive app overhaul has streamlined the app development environment allowing android users to enjoy better app discovery and deal with much fewer low-value apps.

In the long run, Google believes that its major policy shift will ensure better quality control, user trust and encourage developers to develop apps of higher quality going into the future.

Conclusion

The overhaul of the Google Play Store will propel the Android app to attract apps of higher quality instead of quantity and challenge developers to offer app users value over volume.