India sees 2nd-highest mobile downloads of GenAI apps in 2024, shows data

India has become the second in the world in terms of downloads of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) apps on mobile (Apple iOS and Google Play), lagging only behind the US, in calendar year 2024 (CY24), according to data from Sensor Tower, which monitors app trends across the globe. 

The country saw downloads of GenAI apps hit 177 million in CY24, accounting for 11.8 per cent share of total global downloads at 1,490 million. During the year, China was pegged at 133 million while the US was at the top with 200 million downloads.

India’s GenAI app downloads increased by a staggering 135 per cent in CY24 from just 75.2 million in CY23. In contrast, the US saw an increase of 49 per cent in CY24 from 135 million in CY23. 

However, India is far behind in revenues from in-app purchases from GenAI apps where it is nowhere in the top 10. Its revenues of only $12.8 million in CY24 accounts for a mere 1 per cent of the total AI global app revenues. The revenues, however, have increased by over 135 per cent from CY23 when it was only at $4.6 million. 

 

The US was again at the top, generating in-app revenues of $558 million, accounting for over 40 per cent of all revenues, followed by the UK, which is far behind at $55.1 million, Germany ($53 million), Japan ($44 million), Canada (36.9 million), and Brazil ($31 million). China was 10th in the list with in-app revenues of $28.8 million. 

Looking at sub-genres in AI, in AI chatbot apps segment, India saw downloads of 44.2 million in the fourth quarter of CY24 (Q4CY24), putting it in the top spot, accounting for a 10 per cent share of overall global downloads of 427 million. China with 43.6 million and US with 43.2 million were close behind. Again, in AI art generators (which use AI to create digital art), India has a 24.5 per cent of the global downloads of 84.80 million. 

The growing popularity of AI can also be gauged from the fact that in India in CY24 over 3 billion apps were downloaded from both Google Play and iOS mentioning AI-related terms in their name, subtitle, or description, which accounted for 12.3 per cent of all apps downloaded in India (23.4 billion). In CY23, the number of such apps downloaded was only 2.3 billion. Worldwide as many as 17 billion such apps were downloaded, roughly 13 per cent of all app downloads in the year. 

In terms of popularity of AI, chatbots Chat GPT is ranked as the numero uno on the basis of downloads in India, followed by Google’s Gemini. Whatsauto stands at fourth and Microsoft Copilot at number 10. The rest of the players are in the AI Art generative space.