Smartphone AI apps now a $2 billion market led by OpenAI's ChatGPT

By Vlad Savov

  OpenAI’s ChatGPT is leading a major surge in spending on artificial intelligence apps and services on smartphones.

The seminal chatbot has grossed $529 million since its release as a mobile app in May 2023, nearly four times the second-highest earner, according to a new report by Appfigures. The market researchers saw AI app spending nearly quadruple in 2024 over the prior year — to $1.4 billion — and accelerate in the final quarter of the year. The $2 billion market opportunity is driven by consumers in the US, who have contributed about half of all AI app sales to date.

 

Assistant apps, such as ChatGPT and the globally disruptive DeepSeek, are by far the most popular category of AI apps, Appfigures found. Eight of the 10 most downloaded AI apps and the entirety of the top 10 earners were chatbots over the past two years, the data showed. Since July, ChatGPT has earned more each month than the aggregate revenue of all other top assistant apps across Apple Inc.’s iPhone App Store and Alphabet Inc.’s Android Play Store. 

The arrival of DeepSeek may cast some doubt on ChatGPT’s growth, though it was welcomed by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, who said it was “invigorating to have a new competitor.” Altman and other industry leaders, including chipmaker Nvidia Corp., see DeepSeek attracting more attention and potentially more users to the AI field as a whole, and he said OpenAI would move up the release of some upcoming products.

 

Among other notable findings in the report, more than half of ChatGPT’s mobile users are aged between 18 and 24, and the vast majority of AI users are male. Revenue across various categories of AI apps exploded in 2024, with an average growth of 862% across 12 market segments that were analyzed.

 

The challenge of monetizing the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in AI infrastructure remains an unsolved problem for companies from OpenAI to Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc., though smartphone users at least are showing increasing willingness to part with cash to help support the effort and access novel software.