Almost 7,000 applications have disappeared from the Russian section of the Apple App Store
According to research by Sensor Tower, after the start of the war in Ukraine, 6,982 iPhone and iPad applications were removed from the Russian section of the App Store.
Source: TechCrunch
In total, these programs have been installed in Russia about 218 million times – about 3% of the global number of installations (6.6 billion) of applications on Apple devices. It is worth noting that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many companies announced that they were leaving the Russian market.
As a result, a number of applications became inaccessible to Russians. From February 24 to March 14, the amount of software removed increased by 105%. A similar pattern during these periods is observed in the Belarusian section.
Who removed their applications from the Russian App Store
In particular, the beverage manufacturer Coca-Cola and the clothing brand H&M have removed their programs. The official programs of the sports associations NFL, NBA, WWE, as well as Eurosport channels have also disappeared from the Apple store. Mobile game developers have also joined, including Zynga, Supercell, Take-Two (Rockstar Games).
Finnish studio Supercell, owned by China’s Tencent, announced its withdrawal from the Russian and Belarusian markets on March 9 – Brawl Stars, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, and Hay Day disappeared from the App Store.
The Clash of Clans alone has been installed by the Russians 36 million times. This statistic includes both iOS and Android.
- Take-Two took similar steps two days earlier: Russians and Belarusians, in particular, lost access to the GTA series.
- On March 8, Zynga withdrew its Russian and Belarusian audiences with its collection, which includes mobile hits Farmville 3, Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells, Empires & Puzzles, Solitaire, and Zynga Poker.
- Following the suspension of activities in Russia, the client application was removed from the App Store by the Netflix platform, and so did the dating services Bumble and Badoo.
- On March 4, Microsoft announced the cessation of new sales of goods and services in Russia. After that, the company removed from the Apple store programs such as Solitaire, Majong, Wordament, and even Minecraft (the latter is still available in the Google Play Store), although among the working applications continue to lead Word, Office, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Outlook.
- Google has also imposed some restrictions on Russians by suspending the advertising platform and disabling monetization on YouTube. However, its “Documents”, “Tables”, “Presentations”, “Assistant”, “Calendar”, “Disk”, One and Keep programs are still available.
- Adobe has also announced its closure, backing up its statement by removing Photoshop and Illustrator from the Russian App Store, although Adobe Reader remains available and ranks 15th in the store’s work chart.
The Russian section of the Apple store has also lost IMDb, Trivago, The Weather Channel from IBM, DAZN sports broadcasts, and Google Home services.
If you take into account the category, most App Store applications have disappeared from the following sections:
- “Games”,
- “Work”,
- “Utilities”,
- “Music”,
- “Business”,
- “Education”,
- “Health”.
