The Russian App Store faces consequences because of the ongoing Ukraine conflict

As reported, the Russian chapter of the App Store suffered from a drop of almost a quarter to seven thousand of its mobile programs since the Russian administration decided to invade Ukraine. Many companies are taking apps off from the Russian App Store, as reported by TechCrunch based on Sensor Tower data.

Till now, these smartphone apps were being installed across Russia a million times, contributing almost three percent to global installation, i.e. six & half-billion installs, worldwide. While a huge amount of companies are now leaving the App Store in Russia, some products owned by some big brand companies continuously rank top on the App Store, VPN apps top the download charts on the App Store.

Meanwhile, Apple continues to take down apps that are not much active on the App Store. After the conflict took place, the App Store in Russia saw a jump of a hundred and a five percent of apps removed from the store. While before the conflict took place, there were only 3404 applications taken down from the store, comparably with apps that were taken down from Stores across the globe; Even in the USA, which saw 3422 app removals. This takedown before the conflict was part of the cleaning process done by Apple.

However, it’s not only Russia the only nation that is affected by this conflict. Developers have taken down their app from the App Store in Belarus, a country that shares a border with Russia and is Russian friendly which supports their cause. Belarus, till now has lost around 5900 products on the App Store ever since the conflict occurred, a jump of 73 percent.

Comparably, App Stores in other countries have seen a much lesser jump in programs being taken down; primarily because of maintenance work done by Apple Inc.

The Russian government’s decision to invade Ukraine landed huge blows to the Russian economy. Being disconnected from the world, NATO allies continue to put sanctions on Russia and on any identity that is supporting the Russian government in their cause. Multinational companies; such as IKEA, McDonald’s, and many others are putting their operations in the country on hold.

And as for some cases, some brands have taken down their programs from the Russian App Store in a protest such as Coca-Cola, which has put a halt to its operations in the country. WWE, a famous wrestling entertainment company, also took down their mobile platform from the Russian App Store after the invasion.

Gaming companies, such as Supercell which is famous for its mobile phone games such as the Brawl Stars also responded to the war by barring the users in Russia from accessing their mobile apps. According to the reports, Rockstar Games, Inc. has taken off its famous GTA series and other products too.

Steaming services, such as Netflix have also revealed that the video streaming platform is planning to have its app taken down from the store as well.


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