What kills apps, and why it isn’t being Sherlocked
- Sherlocking isn’t a death sentence: nearly five years after iOS 15 shipped Background Sounds, Dark Noise’s RevenueCat-verified public page showed $4,731 in monthly recurring revenue and 2,606 active subscriptions.
- Why Apple leaves room: the iPhone is just over half of Apple’s revenue ($209.6 billion of $416.2 billion in fiscal 2025), so system features must serve everyone – leaving specialists to win on depth, retention, maintenance, and distribution.
- The four real killers: obscurity, chasing revenue instead of retention, stalling, and shiny object syndrome kill more apps than Sherlocking – and every one is self-inflicted and fixable by you.
- Obscurity is the biggest: getting noticed is a campaign, not a launch-day event – it’s why Kickstart’s launch calendar runs from 45 days before release to 60 days after.
- Retention before revenue: keep existing users coming back first, because a retained user is more valuable than ten bounced installs.
- Don’t let it rot: under Apple’s App Store Improvements process, an app not updated within three years with very few downloads can be flagged for removal, with 90 days to submit an update.