The problem is it's not really in Apples interest to get app sizes smaller.
Larger apps means you have more "need" to upgrade your phone to the latest version with more space, power, speed etc.
Larger apps means you have more "need" to upgrade your phone to the latest version with more space, power, speed etc.
I suppose it can help hide price increases of the next higher configurations, such as when the base configuration of the MacBook Pro decreased from 256GB to 128GB between 2016 and 2017, with the list price for 256GB configurations increasing by a couple hundred dollars. However, Apple has also gone as far as developing an entirely new filesystem to decrease storage use.
And it is in Apple's interest to have smaller apps, because then people will be able to download more apps. They'll be willing to try more apps, because there will be less of a barrier between seeing the download button and being up and running.
When your low end configuration is hard to use because Facebook takes up 29% of the storage... that's a problem. Customers get mad.
When they can't update Facebook because it wants more space and the device is full and now the user is locked out from their friends... customers get mad.
When updating a handful of apps uses up 70% of their monthly data... users get mad.
And ALL of that effects apple's bottom line.
I haven't seen any data in this thread to back that up. It certainly doesn't apprar true in my experience.