Global consumer spending on mobile apps surpassed spending on mobile games for the first time in 2025, according to Sensor Tower’s annual “State of Mobile” report. While this trend had been observed in specific regions like the U.S., or during certain quarters, 2025 marked a worldwide shift. Total app spending reached approximately $85 billion, a 21% increase from the previous year and nearly 2.8 times the amount spent five years prior.
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Generative AI emerged as a primary driver of this revenue growth. In-app purchase revenue for AI apps more than tripled, exceeding $5 billion in 2025. Downloads for AI applications also saw significant growth, doubling year-over-year to reach 3.8 billion.
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Several factors contributed to the AI segment’s expansion. The widespread adoption of AI assistants was a major catalyst, with all top 10 downloaded apps falling into this category. Leading apps included OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and DeepSeek. ChatGPT alone generated $3.4 billion in global in-app purchase revenue.
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Users dedicated 48 billion hours to generative AI apps in 2025, a 3.6x increase from 2024 and a 10x increase from 2023. The total number of app sessions exceeded 1 trillion in 2025. This session growth outpaced new downloads, indicating that existing users were engaging more deeply with these applications.
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Significant investment from major tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, and X also fueled AI app revenue and adoption. These companies rapidly introduced new capabilities for their AI assistants, enhancing features like coding support, content creation, reasoning, task execution, and accuracy. The report highlighted advancements in image and video generation, citing ChatGPT’s GPT-4o model and Google’s Nano Banana.
OpenAI and DeepSeek collectively captured almost 50% of global AI app downloads, a substantial increase from 21% in 2024. Concurrently, major tech publishers expanded their market share from 14% to nearly 30%, displacing earlier competitors like Nova, Codeway, and Chat Smith.
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The report emphasized mobile’s crucial role in connecting users to generative AI services. Sensor Tower estimated that the U.S. audience for AI assistants exceeded 200 million by year-end, with over half (110 million) accessing these assistants solely via mobile devices. In contrast, only about 13 million users were mobile-only in 2024.
Beyond AI assistants, other notable AI applications included the music generation app Suno, ByteDance’s text-to-video app Jimeng AI, and AI companion apps such as Character.ai and Polybuzz.
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While AI was a significant revenue driver, Sensor Tower also identified other app categories contributing to overall growth. These included social media, video streaming, and productivity applications. For example, users spent an average of 90 minutes daily on social media apps, accumulating nearly 2.5 trillion hours, a 5% increase year-over-year.
