What Happens When Anyone Can Build an iOS App in a Weekend?
Building apps is getting cheaper, but getting chosen is getting more expensive.
I’ve been running this thought experiment in my head for a while, and the more I test it against what Apple is doing today, the more the same pattern keeps showing up: building apps is getting cheaper, but getting chosen is getting more expensive.
Here’s the path I followed to get there.
I started with the simplest cause-and-effect chain
If AI keeps lowering the cost of making an iOS app, then the number of apps people can ship goes up. That part is almost unavoidable. The tricky part is what happens next.
When the supply of apps explodes, three things become scarce:
- Attention (people can’t browse infinite options)
- Trust (people don’t know what’s safe, real, maintained)
- Distribution (getting surfaced in the store becomes the whole game)
So even if it becomes “easy” to build a good to-do list, it becomes hard to make anyone notice your to-do list. The bottleneck moves from engineering to visibility.
Then I looked at Apple’s incentives, and the strategy basically revealed itself
Apple makes money when:
- transactions happen in the ecosystem, and
- the ecosystem stays trustworthy enough that users don’t get burned and stop downloading.
And Apple already has rule-language designed for “too many low-effort lookalikes,” like Minimum Functionality, Spam / duplicate apps, and rejection risk for template-generated apps. Those policies exist today, if the store gets flooded harder, it’s logical that enforcement becomes stricter and more automated.
So I don’t need a wild prediction to expect tighter control. I only need this: Apple has both the ability and the incentive.
That’s where one conclusion snapped into focus: the app stops being the destination
At first, “the app becomes a capability” sounds like a slogan. But I got to it by following the user’s behavior.
If the store is saturated, users don’t want to “try” ten apps to find the right one. They want outcomes with minimal friction. And Apple keeps expanding the OS surfaces where outcomes can happen without “opening an app” in the traditional sense: Spotlight, Siri, widgets, shortcuts, app intents, and now Apple Intelligence-driven interactions.
So the app’s value shifts from “come into my app” to “I show up exactly when you need me.”
That’s not philosophical it’s economic. In a world of infinite substitutes, anything that requires extra steps loses.
Next I asked: if that’s true, what happens to monetization?
This is where your point about subscriptions really matters.
In a crowded category, a subscription has a problem: users mentally compare you to the cheapest substitute, not to the value you think you provide. If there are 1,000 to-do lists, paying €8/month starts to feel irrational, even if yours is objectively better. The existence of endless “good enough” options dilutes willingness to pay.
So I looked for revenue models that survive abundance and I kept arriving at monetization that feels tied to outcomes, trust, or ecosystems, not just access.
The new revenue channels that keep making sense (and why)
Here’s what I’d bet on, and the reasoning line behind each.
Paid discovery becomes unavoidable (and Apple leans into it)
When organic discovery gets noisy, the clean pressure valve is advertising inventory. Apple literally rebranded Search Ads to Apple Ads and explicitly framed it as “beyond search,” which tells me they see expansion here.
So one “revenue stream” isn’t even inside your app it’s that you treat distribution like a core system, and build a product that can afford paid acquisition.
Usage-based / credits-based pricing replaces “one subscription fits all”
If users hate subscriptions in commodity categories, the alternative is to charge when a clearly valuable event happens:
- “generate a plan”
- “summarize and organize”
- “run an automation”
- “create an asset”
This works especially well when AI costs scale with usage anyway. It matches cost to value, and it’s easier to justify psychologically than another monthly fee.
Patronage / tipping becomes a serious native model (very plausible)
Patreon-style model built into iOS. I actually think that logic is clean: when features are easy to copy, relationship and goodwill become monetizable.
If Apple can take a platform cut while keeping payments native, it aligns with their incentives. It also fits the “community moat” strategy for indies.
Bundles and “co-ops” beat lone subscriptions
If subscription fatigue rises, bundles increase perceived value. Apple already trained users to understand bundling with Apple One-like thinking, so extending that pattern to curated third-party bundles (even informally) is logical.
The main point: bundles compete on “value stack,” not on one feature.
B2B licensing quietly outperforms B2C in saturated zones
If consumer discovery is dying, you step sideways into:
- per-seat pricing
- admin features
- compliance and controls
You’re no longer fighting 10,000 consumer apps in search results.
“App as platform” via extensions/add-ons
If switching between apps is easy, you want switching costs that aren’t evil just structural. A plugin/add-on ecosystem creates that. It also creates second-order monetization: you earn from others building on top of you.
Physical-world tie-ins are harder to commoditize
If part of the value depends on operations, services, or physical products, AI can’t clone it as easily. The app becomes the software layer of something real (coaching, services, devices, events, memberships). That’s one of the cleanest moats in an “infinite apps” world.
The 5-year picture I end up with
When I stitch all of this together, I don’t see “the death of apps.” I see a market where:
- thin apps die (low value, duplicated, template clones)
- integrated apps win (show up in OS surfaces, not only in their own UI)
- generic subscriptions weaken
- outcome-based monetization grows
- distribution becomes pay-to-play
- trust becomes a product feature
And Apple’s strategy, from where I’m sitting, looks like a balancing act:
- clamp down harder on low-value flood (because trust is existential)
- expand paid discovery surfaces (because attention is scarce and monetizable)
- keep the ecosystem narrative strong (“look how much commerce happens here”)
If I were building right now, what I’d optimize for
If I had to place one practical bet today, it would be this:
- I’d build something that can be described as a capability invoked in context, not “an app you open,” and I’d attach monetization to measurable outcomes (credits / usage / transactions), while also building an owned audience outside the store so I’m not entirely dependent on ranking.
- That’s the play that stays rational even when the store becomes impossibly crowded.
I’m applying this strategy in my own product, SafeNest, an iOS app that lets future parents scan their home for potential hazards for babies and crawling children. Instead of a subscription, I’m using a pay-per-successful-analysis model.
That model matches the psychology of the moment:
- Users don’t feel locked in.
- They’re not paying for “access.”
- They’re paying for a clear outcome: a completed safety scan with usable results.
It also matches the economics of AI-based products:
- The cost of running analysis scales with usage.
- So charging per outcome keeps pricing aligned with real cost and real value.
Most importantly, it fits the bigger thesis of this entire article:
- When apps become abundant, trust and outcomes become the product.
- And the winning monetization isn’t “please subscribe to my generic tool.”
- It’s “pay when I genuinely solve something important for you.”
SafeNest is my way of betting on that future not just talking about it.