Distribution • July 17, 2025 • 6 min read

The Fight for Discoverability in App Distribution

As the years roll on, the app discoverability issue doesn’t appear to be going away. But a powerful solution currently exists across the alternative app store ecosystem, and is being driven forward by a proactive regulation movement.

Discoverability has been a challenge for game makers almost as long as there have been smartphones.

The day Apple’s App Store debuted in 2008, it offered 500 apps – some of which were games. By the following year, the App Store hosted 100,000 apps – 16,000 of which were games. Even in those early days, getting your game to stand out was a demanding business – particularly if you weren’t working with a renowned IP, didn’t have a relationship with Apple, or weren’t already a major publisher. Soon the problem would spread to the likes of Google Play, and away from mobile, even Steam.

As of 2025, there are just over 2 million apps available on the App Store, around 300,000 of which are games – and 70 % of downloads on their store come from searches . This is largely driven by Apple’s Search Ads which, combined with the deprecation of IDFA, has shifted developers' focus to paying for visibility in search results rather than relying on targeted user data.

Those figures make it very clear why it is hard to stand out and connect with relevant and high-value players, made more challenging by a lack of any real innovation in the discoverability model.

CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE

There is no doubt that Apple and Google deserve considerable credit for growing the mobile game sector. And yet the dominance of their respective stores means too much good content gets lost in the shuffle.

For years, the two giants have significantly restricted developers and publishers’ ability to distribute apps on other stores, monetise through their own channels, and host their own platforms. That is now changing, in the wake of a number of high profile court cases and shifts in the regulation landscape.

Most famously, Epic took Google and Apple to court in 2020, striving for a fairer competition landscape, fighting to avoid what many see as an unfair revenue share. In the most recent ruling, a U.S. court has blocked Apple from restricting developers from linking to alternative payment options or charging commissions on those transactions, a decision that’s caused ripples across the industry.

AN EPIC BATTLE

Following these continuing legal battles, anticompetition regulation began to emerge, with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers bill (DMCC) being created to reduce the dominance of the Google and Apple duopoly. And as we speak, Japan and others are preparing or considering their own regulatory reforms.

Does this regulation diminish the discoverability challenge overnight? No. Apple and Google continue to have an interest in prioritising their own products, and those of their closest partners, regardless of rule changes.

To their credit, Apple and Google have both tried to tackle the discoverability challenge themselves. Recently, Apple has been removing apps that are no longer compatible with supported iPhone models, and introduced categories this year. Weeks later, Google revised its popular widget system , showcasing apps with widget support at the store’s front end offering one more avenue to exposure.

However, it’s too little too late. The coming of regulation and even Apple’s recent loss has cracked open the ecosystem, allowing third party app stores, developers and distributors to operate more freely. That affords more opportunity than ever for the entire mobile gaming space to address discoverability however they see fit.

A NEW LANDSCAPE

In the expanded ecosystem, app developers have more opportunity to innovate on distribution. According to a 2024 audience study by IPSOS , most of today’s players are open to accessing more ways to download apps.

Of course this is not to suggest abandoning Apple and Google’s stores, as they currently provide the largest potential reach. Instead, it’s worth considering the major players as one hammer in an app developer’s toolkit. More options are available.

For example, hundreds of alternative stores that are less bloated with content exist globally, all with differing tools to highlight apps that differ from the major players. Many bring expertise on specific regions, some give better distribution deals while others cater to specific tastes, or even emerging models like rewarded gaming.

At Aptoide , for example, we reinvest a portion of our revenue into marketing for games in our stores and we’re even trialing an AI-powered discoverability chatbot. Others, such as Xiaomi’s GetApps, offer rewards-based models where users can earn tokens for engaging with content, providing an incentive for app discovery. In recent months and years we’ve also seen global app store distribution providers appear, promising a route to distributing to stores.

Things are moving in the right direction, and any ambitious studio or publisher should currently be looking into – and ideally testing – what is possible beyond the App Store and Play Store. The legislation effort continues, meaning there is more freedom to be discovered beyond the duopoly.