Anyone Can Ship an App Now. Getting Anyone to Open It Is the Hard Part.

The supply side broke first

Ian Sierra: Where does this go over the next few years?

I think there’s going to be a new age where everyone is able to create an app. We’re already living in it, as you can see. You can create an app in a day, have it published in a week, and already have downloads that same week.

If everybody has the ability to technically build something, then the only thing that separates you from everybody else is creativity. Where can you share your creativity the most? Through marketing. Through creator content.

The numbers behind him are not subtle. Sensor Tower counted 235,800 new App Store submissions in the first quarter of 2026, an 84 percent jump year over year and the steepest growth in four years. Appfigures put worldwide releases across both stores up 60 percent for the same quarter, with iOS up 80 percent. Most of the reporting attributes the surge to AI coding tools putting first-time builders into a market that used to require a specialist.

Demand did not follow. Downloads grew roughly three percent last year and about two percent so far this year.

The case for documenting everything

So what does a person actually do about it?

The best thing right now, as someone who is starting to understand more about the world, is to document as much as you can. Not just blogs, not just interviews, not just videos. Create as much as you can. We’re in an economy where the larger digital footprint you have, the larger digital expansion you have.

That’s not saying you have to constantly be commenting on Reddit posts. I think you should have more long-form content.

He points at streamers as the extreme version of the strategy. By his estimate, the globally known ones are sitting on more than 2,000 hours of footage.

When you have that amount of liquid content available, you can use it to promote yourself everywhere.

Seven hours, one minute at a time

Explain the seven-hour idea.

There’s this whole theory that the seven-hour conversion takes seven hours in total for someone to convert from a no to a yes on a specific type of business, a specific service, a specific type of trust.

Obviously you’re not going to watch seven hours all in one day. But if every single day you’re watching a minute of this, how long is it going to take you to eventually recognise them as, okay, wow, this is someone I see every day for at least a minute, maybe 30 seconds? A year? Two years? Of course it takes time. This is a slow-cook process.

Worth flagging for anyone about to build a content calendar around it: the framework Escobar is describing is the 7-11-4 rule, which holds that a buyer needs about seven hours of content, eleven touchpoints and exposure across four channels before they trust a brand enough to act. It is usually credited to Google’s Zero Moment of Truth research from 2011, though it reads more like a practitioner’s distillation of that work than a figure Google itself published, and at least one 2026 write-up notes that a primary source for the exact numbers is hard to find. Treat it as a shape rather than a target.

His second point about the maths is the one that gets less airtime.

Say more about the total input going up.

As we begin to consume more and more content every day, the total input of content that we get just expands. You don’t even take into consideration the off-season times, like summer. The kids are on summer. What are they usually doing? They’re not going out and playing football, not all of them. They’re mostly all just on their phones. That’s something that’s going to continue happening.

He includes himself in the criticism

Are you doing this yourself?

I generally should start doing this on my own as well, because it’s probably something that I’ve always just been overlooking.

However, I’m a very big speaker. I really like speaking and I really like to share my thoughts, and I think there’s no better platform in today’s world to share your thoughts than online. Post it everywhere. Stream it. Record yourself walking, go over there, just talk to the camera sometimes, and then maybe somebody is listening.

The posting plan

Escobar’s distribution sequence, in his words:

1. Start on TikTok.
2. Cut three, four, or five formats of the same video and see which one moves.
3. Take the winner and push it to YouTube and Instagram.
4. Keep the long-form on YouTube, so the people who want more of you have somewhere to go and you can get closer to the community.
5. Live streams on Twitch or Kick, later.

I really would push live streams a little bit towards after you’re more comfortable with your audience and you know exactly what type of videos you want to produce and exactly what direction you want to go towards.

Picking a niche that survives

How do you choose what to talk about?

Identify a specific niche. Niche markets change constantly. It’s not something that’s just going to be here forever. There are people who still like Pokémon cards, so yes, there are some long-term markets. It really depends on the community. Niche communities either accept and expand, or they narrow down and constrict. You have to understand which one is going to expand over the next couple of years.

One of them is mobile app development. It’s been blowing up since the 2010s. Now it’s so easily accessible, and everybody wants to make an app, because making an app is cool.

Then the qualifier that sets up the second half of this interview.

But making an app is only going to go so far unless there’s hardware development.

Part two of this interview covers what Escobar thinks that hardware is, and why he believes the AI infrastructure boom is quietly paying for it.

By the numbers

Common questions

How many new apps were added to the App Store in 2026?

Apple's App Store took in roughly 560,000 new apps in the first half of 2026, close to its entire 2025 total, and is tracking to pass a million by December. The previous annual record was 890,000, set in 2016.

Are App Store downloads growing as fast as app supply?

No. Downloads grew roughly three percent in 2025 and about two percent so far in 2026, against submission growth of 84 percent year over year in the first quarter. Supply is rising far faster than demand.

What is the 7-11-4 rule?

The 7-11-4 rule holds that a buyer needs about seven hours of content, eleven touchpoints and exposure across four channels before trusting a brand enough to act. It is commonly credited to Google's Zero Moment of Truth research, though a primary source for the exact figures is hard to find.

What posting sequence does Jeffrey Escobar recommend?

Start on TikTok, cut three to five formats of the same video and see which one moves, push the winner to YouTube and Instagram, keep long-form on YouTube for the people who want more, and add live streams on Twitch or Kick only once the audience is established.