Generative AI (GenAI) applications experienced substantial growth in the first half of 2025, according to a report by Sensor Tower. Downloads reached 1.7 billion, a significant increase from the 1 billion recorded in the second half of 2024.
The report highlighted that users spent over 15.6 billion hours on GenAI apps during the first six months of 2025, a considerable rise from the 8.5 billion hours logged in the latter half of 2024. This usage was spread across 426 billion sessions. In-app revenue for these applications doubled, reaching $1.87 billion in H1 2025, compared to $932 million in H2 2024.
Asia emerged as the fastest-growing market for GenAI apps, capturing a leading market share of 42.6% in terms of downloads. This growth was primarily fueled by markets such as India and Mainland China. The download growth rate in Asia was 80% in H1 2025, surpassing the 51% growth in Europe and 39% in North America. While Latin America (LatAm) demonstrated the highest growth in in-app purchases for GenAI apps, North America maintained the largest market share, accounting for 40% of in-app revenue.
ChatGPT maintained its position as the top app for in-app revenue in nearly every country, with the exception of China. In China, DeepSeek outperformed ChatGPT in terms of downloads in the weeks following its launch. Users are increasingly engaging with AI assistants, with ChatGPT leading in user engagement. On average, individuals used ChatGPT for more than 12 days per month during H1 2025. Other popular GenAI apps included Character AI, PolyBuzz, DeepSeek, and Perplexity.
Sensor Tower noted that ChatGPT’s user retention is significant, with usage patterns nearing those of popular platforms like X and Reddit. Google remains the only platform with a higher average number of days used per month. The report also pointed out that ChatGPT’s weekend usage has increased since the previous year, indicating that users are incorporating the AI-powered chat app into their routines beyond work-related tasks. According to the report, “This development makes its app usage patterns more akin to Google’s, which consumers rely on as a primary search tool both during and outside of work hours.”
The difference in usage between ChatGPT and leading search engine/browser apps has narrowed. In H1 2025, ChatGPT recorded an average daily usage of 16 minutes, compared to 18.2 minutes for the top search engine and browser apps. Beyond search functionalities, users are utilizing ChatGPT for advice and information related to health and wellness, shopping, personal finance, and meal preparation. Over a third of the prompts used on ChatGPT in Q2 2025 were related to lifestyle and entertainment.
ChatGPT is expanding its user base across both mobile apps and web platforms. Over 15% of ChatGPT users in the U.S. access the service through both web and mobile platforms, a higher rate than platforms like Temu and Threads. However, platforms such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Google Docs, and Amazon still have a larger percentage of users (over 25%) accessing their services on both web and mobile.
The term “AI” is now prevalent in app descriptions, appearing over 100,000 times in the App Store and Play Store. Apps mentioning AI were downloaded 7.5 billion times in H1 2025, accounting for approximately 10% of total downloads. In the past year, an increasing number of apps in various categories, including AI assistants, AI content generation, photo editing, nutrition & diet, test preparation, tutoring & studying, translation, and other hobbies & interest services, have incorporated AI-related terms into their descriptions.
Furthermore, a growing number of top-ranked apps in different categories now include “AI” in their names. While this addition leads to a short-term increase in downloads, the long-term impact remains to be seen. Sensor Tower stated, “Unsurprisingly, apps that added terms like ‘AI’ or ‘LLM’ to their app names or descriptions experienced a notable boost in downloads over the subsequent months.”
