Google recently made the announcement that it would remove any obsolete Android apps from the Play Store that didn’t support the platform’s most recent features or had been ignored. A recent report claims that Google’s crackdown will result in the removal of roughly 900,000 out-of-date Android apps from the Play Store.
According to analyst firm Pixalate, which was cited by CNET , over 1.5 million apps will be removed or hidden from Google and Apple’s respective app stores because they have been neglected for at least two years.
Taking a closer look at that information, it is estimated that the Google Play Store has about 869,000 old Android apps that have not been updated in the previous two years. Google previously stated that these abandoned apps will be hidden from visibility in the Play Store and would not appear in search results for any prospective new users of those apps. These apps’ current users won’t be impacted.
Google has not yet responded to the alleged number.
On November 1, 2022, this modification to the Play Store’s hosting of apps is scheduled to go into effect, providing developers plenty of time to deploy updates to their apps. In order to avoid these changes, Google requires that apps must target an API level with their apps from the previous two years. That means aiming for at least API level 29, which corresponds to Android 10, as of May 2022. Android 13 is currently in beta testing for API level 33, while Android 12 and 12L currently support levels 31 and 32.
According to at least one impacted developer, Apple is reportedly prepared to completely delete these out-of-date apps from its store. There are about 650,000 abandoned apps in the App Store.
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