Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, today released the Q1 2023 Delisted Mobile Apps Report, analyzing apps from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store that are no longer available for download as of Q1 2023.
Apps can be delisted from the app stores yet may remain on a user’s mobile device. Google and Apple regularly remove apps from their app stores for a variety of reasons. While some apps are delisted for benign reasons, others are removed as a result of more nefarious behaviors, including non-compliance with app store policies.
Pixalate’s report analyzes app profile information such as developer country of registry, existence of a privacy policy, app store category, and its child-directedness under the COPPA Rule. The report also contains insight into the apps’ behaviors observed in the programmatic advertising bid stream such as transmission of personal information including location data, and estimated ad spend.
Key Findings:
- 3.5M+ delisted apps across Google Play (2.4M), Apple App stores (1.1M) in the last 2 years, since Q1 2021
- 107% YoY increase on apps delisted in Google Play and Apple App Stores, from 220k+ in Q1 2022 to 454k+ in Q1 2023
- 12% of delisted Apple apps were “super-abandoned” (4+ yrs. since last update), 5% in Google Play Store
- 6% of delisted apps in Apple had no privacy policy URL detected, 7% in Google Play
- 14.7k delisted apps across Google (14.5k) and Apple (216) app stores have “Screensaver” or “Wallpaper” in their title
- Since Q1 2022, 488k developers have had all of their apps delisted from the Google or Apple app stores
- 46% of developers with delisted apps have more than 50% of their apps being removed from stores.
Pixalate’s Q1 2023 Delisted Mobile Apps Report includes:
- Google and Apple Store Analysis
- Programmatic Ads Analysis
- Transparency Analysis
- Country of Registry Analysis
- Category Analysis
- Likely Child-Directed App Analysis
- “Screensavers” App Analysis
- By Delisted Developers Analysis
- List Top 10 Apps by Store
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