I think apple noticed a long time ago that the world is not exactly lacking in quantity of phone apps. If anything, the sheer number of them has become a hindra

I think apple noticed a long time ago that the world is not exactly lacking in quantity of phone apps. If anything, the sheer number of them has become a hindrance to anyone wading through thousands of nearly identical apps to try to find the actually good one. So if they implement policies that increase the average quality of apps and decrease the total quantity, that's an improvement for users twice over.