“Vibecoded” apps flood Apple’s App Store

Marco Pérez has long wanted to read all the news that interested him in one place. This year, he used artificial intelligence tools to get the job done quickly.

Mr. Pérez, a software engineer from Chicago who had never built a mobile app before, spent five weeks over the winter tinkering with AI “vibecoding” tools to create a prototype and another two weeks preparing the app for Apple’s App Store. The InfoDrizzle app was moderately successful, with 1,300 downloads and about $500 in revenue.

Mr. Pérez’s next application was more popular. In May, after about a week of work, he released Stampa, a scrapbooking app that turns photos into digital postage stamps. The stamp was downloaded 20,000 times and earned about $3,000.

The two apps have been part of a surge in Apple’s App Store expansion over the past year and a half, after years of slower growth — thanks in large part to vibecoding.

Vibecoding emerged as a phenomenon last year as artificial intelligence got better at creating software code. Without people knowing anything about programming or writing a line of code, they can describe an idea to an AI tool that can create a custom website or app for them.

“I feel like the mobile app space was really hot and a little boring 10 years ago,” Mr. Pérez, 27, said. “Now it’s the hottest thing again because of AI and vibecoding and because that technical barrier isn’t there anymore.”

But as with many things AI, just because something is easy to build doesn’t mean people will use it. It’s unclear whether vibecoding breathes new life into the App Store or just overwhelms it.

Last year, the number of new apps released on the App Store rose 30 percent to about 600,000, according to estimates from app analytics company Sensor Tower. In the first half of this year, the number of new applications doubled to around 560,000.

This boom could benefit Apple. The company takes a 30 percent cut of in-app purchases, such as subscriptions, or 15 percent from smaller developers. In theory, the more apps in the App Store, the higher the revenue for Apple.

But Apple can’t back down if consumers aren’t downloading and buying things from apps — and App Store downloads haven’t taken off. Last year, according to Sensor Tower, they grew by 3 percent to 35.4 billion. In the first half of this year, the number of downloads increased by 2 percent to 17.6 billion.

Even if they aren’t downloaded and used, all new apps require resources and work from Apple. The company manually reviews apps before releasing or updating them on the App Store.

In recent months, app makers have complained about longer review times on Apple’s developer forums. in March for examplethe app’s developer said it had been “waiting for review” for about a month with no communication from Apple.

Peter Ajemian, an Apple spokesman, said the app required further technical review and received approval shortly after it was resubmitted, and that Apple was in discussions with its developer. He said Apple consistently reviewed 90 percent of submitted applications within 48 hours.

Mr. Ajemian added that downloads were only one measure of the App Store’s value.

“We’re excited to see a new generation of developers using the latest tools to build and deliver apps faster than ever before,” he said in a statement. “All apps meet the same high standards of quality, privacy and security that users trust.”

When Apple introduced the App Store in 2008, developers flooded it with new apps. Flappy Birdthe 2013 game, in which players tried to fly a bird between pipes without hitting them, earned $50,000 a day at the height of its popularity. The number of new apps released in the App Store peaked in 2016, at about 890,000, according to Sensor Tower.

As the App Store matured, consumers coalesced around a handful of apps. Apple raked in $34.21 billion last year on $114.02 billion in revenue from in-app purchases, according to estimates by Appfigures, an app analytics firm.

Growth in the App Store stagnated after 2017. New releases hit a low of about 420,000 in 2022, according to Sensor Tower. But since vibecoding became possible, that has changed. Just like in the early days of mobile apps, developers are joining the gold rush.

Mr. Pérez is one of those developers. He plans to quit his job at JPMorgan Chase next month to develop apps full-time.

“I still talk to those people who are way, way, way ahead of me,” Mr. Pérez said. “It’s crazy how much money they make and the opportunities there are and how fast you can move. Some of these people fail, they build five apps and their sixth one blows up.”

This flood is a mixed bag for Apple. The App Store “isn’t like a typical storefront where you have shelf space,” said Phillip Shoemaker, who ran the App Store from 2009 to 2016. That means having a lot of new, vibecoded apps — “things that someone might use someday” — isn’t necessarily a problem for Apple, he added.

Instead, Mr. Shoemaker said, the risks for the App Store are that it will have “more junk” or make it easier for a “bad actor” to slip in something problematic, such as inappropriate content.

Apple could also see less upside than expected from the increase. Vibecoded apps may not offer in-app purchases, which tend to be more complicated to set up, and instead feature ads, said Eric Seufert, a mobile advertising analyst who runs Mobile Dev Memo, a blog about the app economy.

“Apple doesn’t benefit from this,” Mr. Seufert said.

But not all app developers hope to cash in on themselves — least of all Apple. David Svensson, who works in revenue operations at a building technology company, got serious with vibecoding in February with ChatGPT from OpenAI and Claude from Anthropic when his workplace started pushing its employees to use AI.

Mr Svensson, 44, now pays for subscriptions to the tools and makes “tiny little apps that solve a specific thing”, such as fire risk monitoring and bans in Sweden, where he lives.

Over the past five months, Mr. Svensson has released 11 apps on the App Store, where they have been downloaded a total of nearly 2,400 times. Its most popular app, Utkik, tracks aircraft and vessels. The app has what Mr. Svensson called a “tip jar,” but he said he didn’t otherwise think about making money by vibecoding or vibecoding for other people.

“I want to keep it a passion,” Mr Svensson said. “If something explodes, sure, that would be super, super nice. But that’s not the idea.”