The study from the analytics firm, Pixalate, found that one-third of Apple and Google Apps are outdated, and now developers are facing grave consequences.
Google's Play Store had around 869,000 apps that had been neglected for more than two years, while Apple's App Store had around 650,000, as per CNET.
What Will Happen to Outdated Apps?
The report of PIxalate said that or 1.5 millions of Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store haven't been updated in two years. As per recent policy changes, these abandoned apps could get hidden or removed entirely.
The analytics firm checked through both the App Store and Play Store, examining the abandoned apps or those that have gone two or more years without being updated. They found over 1.5 million abandoned apps among the more than five million apps it examined, according to TechRadar.
Apps become more vulnerable to exploits after two years without an update. This is the reasons why Apple and Google have introduced new policies in recent months that would delete apps that haven't been updated in a while. But this news wasn't received well by the developers.
According to CNET, if an app hasn't been updated in two years, it will be hidden from view on the Google Play Store . It will, therefore, won't appear in search results.
There are still, however, plenty of apps which are more up-to-date comprising 68% of apps on both stores, or over 3.1 million apps.
The study found that apps that are frequently updated are those with far more downloads. In general, 84% of the apps with over 100 million downloads had been updated in the last six months, as per CNET.
Read Also: Apple App Store to Allow External Payments in the Near Future
Apple, Google Will Be Removing Outdated Apps
Because outdated apps pose a significant security risk to end users, both Apple and Google have plans to take action on the issue, according to TechRadar. Thus, users should not worry about the possible security risk.
In fact, Apple recently updated its App Store policy. The company would classify apps that have gone three years without updates as abandoned.
Apple also said that it will begin removing abandoned apps along with apps that have failed to reach a certain number of downloads over the past year, as per TechRadar.
Developers will have 90 days to make changes to the app in question before it's removed from the App Store. This is once Apple marked an app as outdated. However, the apps will not be removed from users' devices, if it is already downloaded and installed. It will only be removed from the company's store
On the other hand, in April, Google announced that it would begin removing outdated Android apps at the end of this year. According to TechRadar, unlike Apple, the search giant will hide app pages and block installations on Android smartphones running a version of the mobile operating system that is higher or outside two years of the app's target API level.
Related Article: Apple to Now Allow Developers to Include Unlisted Apps on App Store: How to Submit Request
