In 2025, mobile app spending surpassed that of gaming apps for the first time globally, according to Sensor Tower’s latest “State of Mobile” report. This significant shift marks a milestone in consumer behavior, with total app expenditure reaching approximately $85 billion, reflecting a robust 21% increase from the previous year. Remarkably, this figure nearly tripled over five years.
A key driver of this growth is generative AI, which propelled in-app purchase revenue in this category to exceed $5 billion—a more than threefold increase year-over-year. Downloads of AI applications also skyrocketed, doubling from the prior year to approximately 3.8 billion.
Multiple factors contributed to the surge in AI app usage. The rising popularity of AI assistants was particularly influential, with all top 10 most downloaded apps being AI-based. Leading the pack were OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and DeepSeek. ChatGPT alone generated $3.4 billion in in-app purchase revenue, emphasizing its role in the market.
In 2025, users spent a staggering 48 billion hours interacting with generative AI apps, a 3.6-fold increase compared to 2024 and ten times more than in 2023. Notably, session volume—indicating how often users engaged with these apps—exceeded one trillion sessions, suggesting that user engagement is outpacing growth in new downloads.
Big tech firms, including Google, Microsoft, and X, significantly invested in enhancing their AI assistants, aiming to compete with ChatGPT. These companies have implemented rapid advancements in capabilities such as coding assistance, content generation, and task execution. The report highlighted improvements in areas like image and video generation, showcasing models such as ChatGPT’s GPT-4o released in March and Google’s Nano Banana.
Among AI app developers, OpenAI and DeepSeek accounted for nearly 50% of total downloads, a sharp rise from 21% in 2024. Additionally, the share of big tech publishers nearly doubled, up to 30%, overtaking previous competitors like Nova and Codeway.
The report underscores the pivotal role mobile devices play in accessing generative AI services, with the user base exceeding 200 million in the U.S. alone. Notably, over 110 million users accessed AI assistants strictly via mobile devices—an increase from just 13 million in 2024.
Beyond AI assistants, various applications in social media, video streaming, and productivity also contributed to overall growth. For instance, consumers averaged 90 minutes daily on social media platforms, translating to nearly 2.5 trillion hours spent in 2025, marking a 5% increase year-over-year.
