Over time sometimes apps can get neglected. This can be because the app’s developer is no longer interested in continuing to support the app, maybe the company has gone broke, maybe there are newer versions that they’d much rather support, and so on. There are many reasons why that can happen.
However it’s not always that developers manually remove their apps when they no longer want to support it, meaning that sometimes users can download an app only to find that it has not been updated for years and no longer works properly on newer iPhones or newer builds of iOS, but it seems that Apple has been on a purging spree, according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower (via AppleInsider).
According to the data, last month saw Apple purge over 47,000 broken and outdated apps from the iTunes App Store. It seems that the majority of the apps that were removed were from the gaming category, 28% to be exact. Other categories also include Entertainment and Books in which the purged apps accounted for 8.99% and 8.96% respectively.
Apple did promise back in September to start cleaning up the iTunes App Store and would be “removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated,” and it looks like they have already begun to do just that.