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In 2025, consumers spent much wealth connected non-game mobile apps than they did connected games for the archetypal time, according to the findings from marketplace quality steadfast Sensor Tower’s yearly “State of Mobile” report. While this milestone had been seen successful peculiar markets, like the U.S., oregon during definite quarters, 2025 marked the archetypal clip it occurred globally. Worldwide, consumers spent astir $85 cardinal connected apps past year, representing a 21% year-over-year increase. The fig was besides astir 2.8x the magnitude spent conscionable 5 years ago.
Image Credits:Sensor TowerGenerative AI, a defining inclination implicit the past year, led the gross growth, arsenic in-app acquisition gross successful this class much than tripled to apical $5 cardinal successful 2025. Downloads of AI apps besides grew, doubling year-over-year to scope 3.8 billion.
Image Credits:Sensor TowerThe segment’s maturation tin beryllium attributed to respective factors. For one, the popularity of AI assistants among consumers was a ample driver, with each of the apical 10 apps by downloads being AI assistants. This radical was led by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and DeepSeek. ChatGPT unsocial generated $3.4 cardinal successful planetary in-app acquisition (IAP) gross — a fig that we reported connected late past year.
Image Credits:Sensor TowerIn 2025, consumers spent 48 cardinal hours successful generative AI apps, oregon 3.6x the full clip spent successful 2024 and 10x the level seen successful 2023. Session volume, meaning the fig of times users opened and utilized an app, topped 1 trillion successful 2025. Of note, this fig was increasing faster than downloads, suggesting that existing users were deepening their engagement faster than the apps were adding caller users.
Image Credits:Sensor TowerAnother origin driving AI app gross and adoption is that large tech companies similar Google, Microsoft, and X person been heavy investing successful their AI assistants to situation ChatGPT. Over the past year, they’ve been rolling retired caller capabilities astatine a accelerated pace, improving successful areas similar coding assistance, contented generation, reasoning, task execution, accuracy, and more. The study specifically called retired improvements successful representation and video generation, similar ChatGPT’s GPT-4o representation procreation exemplary released successful March, and Google’s Nano Banana.
Among the apical AI publishers, OpenAI and DeepSeek accounted for astir 50% of planetary downloads, up from 21% successful 2024. Meanwhile, large tech publishers grew their stock of the marketplace from 14% to astir 30% during this aforesaid time, crowding retired earlier ChatGPT competitors similar Nova, Codeway, and Chat Smith.
Image Credits:Sensor TowerThe study besides highlighted the relation that mobile plays successful connecting users to generative AI services. Sensor Tower estimates that the full assemblage for AI assistants topped 200 cardinal successful the U.S. by year-end, and much than fractional (110M) were accessing the assistants exclusively connected mobile devices. In 2024, for comparison, lone astir 13 cardinal users were mobile-only.
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Beyond assistants, different fashionable AI apps included the AI euphony procreation app Suno; ByteDance’s text-to-video app, Jimeng AI; and AI companion apps similar Character.ai and PolyBuzz.
Image Credits:Sensor TowerHowever, AI wasn’t the lone gross operator past year, Sensor Tower found. Other apps, including those successful categories similar societal media, video streaming, and productivity, besides helped substance the growth, the study noted. For instance, consumers spent an mean of 90 minutes per time connected societal media apps, totaling astir 2.5 trillion hours, up 5% year-over-year.
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