There was a time when the app store was the destination.
Build something good, submit it, and users would find you. The platform handled discovery. The gold rush was real.
That era is over.
App stores are now crowded beyond navigation. Discovery is broken. The top charts are dominated by the same names, year after year.
New apps don't get found — they get buried.
And developers have noticed.
Distribution is moving elsewhere. To social platforms. To communities. To word of mouth. To anywhere except the storefront that was supposed to be the front door.
The app store still matters for transactions. But it's no longer where attention lives.
This isn't a failure of any single platform. It's the natural end of an era.
When everyone is in the store, being in the store stops being an advantage.
The new challenge isn't getting listed. It's being discovered despite the listing.
That's the shift worth noticing.