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There's a one time fee of $25 and then you can publish as many as you like. That number probably covers only a few thousand accounts.

I paid that fee and had my dev account closed a few years later for inactivity. I never published an app, but they kept my fee.

Statistics I can find via search differ by a lot, but https://www.appbrain.com/stats/number-of-android-apps says there are currently 1.58M available apps. So, it seems they are moving more apps than they are allowing.

why would that be surprising for the world's most popular mobile app store?

because a lot of these apps are thin wrapper around a website.

I have the feeling that more often than not having an app is a vanity checkmark than delivering real value to users.

> because a lot of these apps are thin wrapper around a website.

and those apps would exist on the world's most popular app store.

> because a lot of these apps are thin wrapper around a website.

It still would count an app so I dont see your point.

It’s a joke likely, since most people only use a few top apps

There's a long tail.