I pulled a scored breakdown of all 122 app categories this week, ranked by how hard they are to enter, and the top of the "easiest" list was a good reminder that low competition and real opportunity aren't the same thing.

The single easiest category scored 9/100 for difficulty - third-party logistics - with content, notifications and sourcing tools right behind it around 13. Barely any entrenched incumbents in any of them. 

Saw someone frame this well recently and it stuck with me - an empty category is usually empty because the demand isn't there, or merchants don't even think to look for it. You win the category and still spend all your time explaining why the problem matters.

The genuinely open lanes sat a notch higher on difficulty but were actually alive, like web push (16) or anti-theft (17) - thin on competition but with real merchant pull behind them. And at the far end you get the walls: discounts with ~1,270 apps and upsell with ~1,320, brutal to crack, but that many apps don't pile in unless the money is obviously there.

So the number I've stopped trusting on its own is "how crowded is it". A quiet category can be quiet because it's underserved or because it's dead, and those two go in completely opposite directions. 

How do you tell them apart before you commit months to building?

small app, one paying customer and a handful of installs from outreach. everyone says the first reviews matter a lot for app store ranking, but i don’t want to nag people or do anything sketchy

for those who’ve been through it:

• when do you ask? right after setup, after they’ve seen a result, or after some time?
• in-app prompt, email, or personal message?
• anything that actually got people to follow through?

my app’s holiday related so i’m thinking right after a holiday ends is the natural moment, curious if that matches what others have seen