Sensor Tower: iMessage App Store has 5K apps six months after launch, with games topping category list at 25.9%, but dev interest is waning
Buffer — One of the new additions to iOS 10 … Parmy Olson / Forbes : People Aren't Building Apps For Apple's iMessage Like They Used To Christopher Baugh / iPhone in Canada Blog : iMessage App Store Growth Slows After Six Months: Report Buster Hein / Cult of Mac : Developers lose interest in iMessage apps MacDailyNews : Apple's iMessage App Store nears 5,000 apps after six months as growth slows
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple opened the iMessage App Store with iOS 10 in September 2016, betting that stickers, games, and mini-apps inside Messages would become a developer destination. Six months in, Sensor Tower's count shows the experiment plateauing early: roughly 5,000 apps total, with games leading all categories at 25.9% of the catalog.
The more telling signal is the slope, not the stock — coverage from TechCrunch, Cult of Mac, and iPhone in Canada converges on the same finding that new submissions are decelerating and developer interest is waning while the store is still young.
First-order effects
- Developers who staffed up for iMessage after launch face a shrinking marginal audience per app, and the waning submission rate means Apple's newest storefront is filling slower than the main App Store did at a comparable age.
Second-order effects
- Apple must decide whether to promote iMessage apps harder inside Messages or accept the store as a sticker-and-casual-game shelf; rivals watching the plateau get evidence that bolt-on app stores inside messaging clients struggle without dedicated discovery surfaces.
- Sensor Tower's category read — games at 25.9% here, and later 35% of ARKit-powered apps — positions it as the recurring scorekeeper for whether each new Apple platform attracts a diversified developer base or just casual-game filler.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform extensions live or die on monetization and discoverability rather than novelty: a waning iMessage catalog suggests developers triage quickly, concentrating effort on platforms with proven revenue, which pushes Apple to either deepen in-message commerce or deprioritize the storefront.
- The episode becomes a template for evaluating every subsequent Apple surface — watch the six-month submission curve and the games share before treating a new SDK as a business opportunity.
The trend: New Apple developer platforms are being triaged by an increasingly selective app economy, where each storefront must prove monetization fast or settle into a niche of stickers and casual games.