Almost 7,000 mobile apps have been removed from the Russian App Store since February 24, according to Sensor Tower, an analytics company. This is 105% more than in the first half of last month.
The company's specialists calculated that applications withdrawn from the App Store in Russia were downloaded about 218 million times, which is more than 3% of the 6.6 billion global downloads.
Many app creators have also withdrawn their products from the Belarusian App Store – 5,900 in total. This is 73% more than in the first half of the month.
Sensor Tower analysts explain the removal of applications by the suspension of activities or the withdrawal of foreign companies from the Russian market. For example, H&M and American Eagle Outfitters removed their online stores from the Russian App Store, and Coca-Cola removed an application with a loyalty program.
But most often, games were removed from the Russian App Store, in particular, projects by Zynga, Supercell, Take-Two (Rockstar Games) and others.
The tech giants' apps still top rated apps on the App Store. On March 4, Microsoft announced it would stop selling all new products and services in Russia and has since removed apps such as Solitaire, Majong, Wordament, and specifically Minecraft from the Russian App Store. But Microsoft Word, Office, Excel, Powerpoint, Teams and Outlook are still in the ranking.
Google has also taken action against Russia, including suspending its advertising business in the country, but its apps are still available, including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Assistant, Calendar, Drive, One and Keep.
Adobe has also pledged to leave Russia, saying on March 4 that it will "stop all new sales" of Adobe products and services in Russia "immediately" and will stop access to Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Document Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud for Russian state media. Adobe has since removed some of its apps from the Russian App Store, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, but others remain available for download, including popular business app Adobe Reader.
On March 14, Instagram was blocked in Russia, affecting 80 million users. But as of today, the app still ranks 34th in the ranking because it hasn't actually been removed from the App Store. Russia also restricted other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, while TikTok suspended users' ability to livestream and post new content in Russia and blocked all non-Russian content. But TikTok is still ranked 18th in the Russian App Store.
The rankings are also dominated by VPN apps. The top 10 apps collectively received 4.2 million downloads between February 24 and March 13, up 2286% from the previous period. The top includes Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and Psiphon applications.
In Russia, due to restrictions, the process of buying and paying for App Store and iCloud subscriptions has become much more complicated. talked about how to connect the App Store and iCloud to a mobile phone account on iPhone and Mac.
bbabo.Net