My understanding is that most of the effort in the last year has been in improving the rules creator in the new V3 app, which now makes many individual smartapps unneeded. To access this, simply choose “add automation.“ This is a much more powerful feature than was available in the classic app.
In addition, work continues on the new “rules API” which will allow customers to write any code they want and interface with smartthings through this API. That will be the replacement for groovy smartapps going forward. But it’s still a work in progress.
FAQ: Getting Started with the new Rules API
Finally, until the new rules API is finished, I think most of the people who used to write custom smartapps have switched to writing webcore pistons instead. Webcore is essentially a scripting language for the old groovy platform And they have a very active developer community with their own forum. Many people there would be happy to help you create a custom piston if there’s something that isn’t met by the official rules creator at this time.
FAQ: What is WebCoRE? (And what was CoRE?)
So basically, I think there haven’t been new smartapps released in any region because very few people are writing smartapps anymore. The official features can be found under automations In the new app. And custom work is mostly being done in Webcore right now, with a future look towards the new rules API.
@jody.albritton might be able to say more. 