I think the app store will be in trouble in the future.
I think most non-gaming apps will be replaced by a single AI app that is like a super assistant to you. No need to book on Booking.com app if you can just have your assistant look for what you actually want.
Likewise, I think Google Search is in similar amount of trouble, if not more and faster. Why do you need to search on your own if AI can search 20-30 websites in seconds and find what you're looking for?
Same for things like Microsoft's cash cow Office suites. In fact, Claude already has docs built in.
This is why I think big tech went all in on AI. All their cash cows are under huge threat by AI-first products.
Am I one of very few people that believes LLM apps don't solve or replace a large number of apps.
Take all these basic lifestyle CRUD apps. Maybe it's a skill issue on my part, but whenever I've tried to use LLM apps over any sort of medium-to-long-term time scale for tracking something (ie. endurance running training), within about a month it begins hallucinating, recalling the wrong things, linking the wrong bits of data to other bits of data (dates, distances, heart rate data, workout paces etc), and it does all of this even when pointed to a basic spreadsheet or simple text file to keep it onboard with what happened where. It just seems to look at these files, and then look at it's own context and confuse all the details based on its own context.
Every other month, some brand new shiny model is released and it's exactly the same deal every time. I think the underlying technology simply can't deal with these sorts of goals. A whole range of apps for lifestyle tracking don't seem under threat, in my opinion, if this is the best its capable of.
Many other things I can't imagine wanting an AI to do for me, especially anything involving payments, bookings. There was a discussion the other day on here about AI being used to order takeout. Why would somebody want to delegate one of their last personal decisions to a LLM?
I am in the pro food-order delivery department. I just want to tell my phone, "Hey Siri I want to order at Restaurant X, we are two people, no desert - make suggestion" and it shows me the order on the display with total price, arrival time and the selected food items. If I want, I can command changes - or simply say "Yes thats good, confirm the order" and be done. This is especially useful as I mostly order the same things across 2-3 restaurants, that is most of the time the suggestion is probably right.
Assistant booking a place for me is last thing I'd want, I want to see ratings, photos, overall look&feel of the place, not spin the wheel and get some random place booked
I think the single AI app will be thoroughly enshittified. You ask for a hotel and the assistant operator is normally getting 20% of your payment as a kickback, so it shows you the highest price it thinks you'll pay, but 40% if it's a certain chain so it only shows that chain. Everything will be like this.
I bet it's pretty close to a Pareto distribution with 20% of the apps making 80% of the total App store revenue. You can guess which apps those are from Apple's top/editor's choice charts.
Do you even need the top chart when you open the app and every other day it's either a Scopely property or Monopoly Go?
It's wild to know that Freecash is somehow back in the App Store after [1] earlier this year and they're actively running aggressive marketing campaigns on TV again.
Not public, but services like sensor tower make a decent guess based on (I assume) a small set of people who are willing to install what's effectively spyware for $$$.
Its probably just me, but I had to scroll all the way to the bottom, mentioning something about Macs, to verify that this was only about the Apple app store.
I think most non-gaming apps will be replaced by a single AI app that is like a super assistant to you. No need to book on Booking.com app if you can just have your assistant look for what you actually want.
Likewise, I think Google Search is in similar amount of trouble, if not more and faster. Why do you need to search on your own if AI can search 20-30 websites in seconds and find what you're looking for?
Same for things like Microsoft's cash cow Office suites. In fact, Claude already has docs built in.
This is why I think big tech went all in on AI. All their cash cows are under huge threat by AI-first products.
Take all these basic lifestyle CRUD apps. Maybe it's a skill issue on my part, but whenever I've tried to use LLM apps over any sort of medium-to-long-term time scale for tracking something (ie. endurance running training), within about a month it begins hallucinating, recalling the wrong things, linking the wrong bits of data to other bits of data (dates, distances, heart rate data, workout paces etc), and it does all of this even when pointed to a basic spreadsheet or simple text file to keep it onboard with what happened where. It just seems to look at these files, and then look at it's own context and confuse all the details based on its own context.
Every other month, some brand new shiny model is released and it's exactly the same deal every time. I think the underlying technology simply can't deal with these sorts of goals. A whole range of apps for lifestyle tracking don't seem under threat, in my opinion, if this is the best its capable of.
Many other things I can't imagine wanting an AI to do for me, especially anything involving payments, bookings. There was a discussion the other day on here about AI being used to order takeout. Why would somebody want to delegate one of their last personal decisions to a LLM?
Browsing through hotels is one of the best parts of the entire experience.
People think it's some kind of genius move or very Apple-like move to not join the AI race.
But who is actually going to build apps on the fly better, faster for you? Siri or Opus 9? Siri or GPT 10 Astra?
When many tasks are done better on a single AI app, the iPhone moat will be greatly diminished which will open up competitors to iOS and Android.
Could bé another similar report about Google's App Store?
Thanks again!
It's wild to know that Freecash is somehow back in the App Store after [1] earlier this year and they're actively running aggressive marketing campaigns on TV again.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/14/how-the-rewards-app-freeca...