It's harder than ever for a new app to stand out. People simply aren't using>$4 as many apps as they used to, and recent research has shown>$4 that the top 1% of the App Store's paid app publishers collect 94% of the platform's revenue. Essentially, if you aren't Facebook, Snapchat, or one of the other few known identities, you're yelling against a very strong wind.
Yet, as this chart from Statista>$4 shows, the field is only going to get more crowded. According to app research platform Sensor Tower>$4, the number of active apps in the App Store is projected to nearly double by the end of 2020. Sensor Tower thinks we'll hit more than 5 million at that point, well over the current 2.5 million or so that's out there today.
Even with Apple's new revenue splitting policies>$4, this could make discoverability an even bigger puzzle for aspiring app developers to solve.
![app store projection chart](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57b5fcafce38f231008b7914-1200/20160818_apps.png)
Statista