According to an annual “State of Mobile” report from app intelligence provider Sensor Tower (which acquired Data.ai, the original report’s author, last March), AI apps saw a surge of interest over the past year. This led to an over 200% increase year-over-year in consumer spending in AI apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, Bytedance’s Doubao, and others, bringing the total spent in the category to nearly $1.1 billion in 2024.
If this rate of growth is sustained, this category of apps could move into the top 10 by consumer spending within a year, the firm notes.
Though the release of new AI models, like OpenAI’s GPT-4o last summer, helped to drive app revenue up to record numbers at times, consumer demand for AI apps was consistent throughout the year — not only during these peak surges. As a result, consumers spent nearly 7.7 billion hours using AI apps in 2024, while apps mentioning “AI” were also downloaded 17 billion times in the year.
ChatGPT alone reached 50 million monthly active users — faster than Temu, Disney+, or YouTube Music, for comparison.
This indicates there’s still a growing appetite for AI apps and those with AI features.
Other app categories seeing movement in 2024 included streaming, crypto, e-commerce, and fintech.
Streaming apps saw a slight decline in engagement, despite growth in in-app revenue and downloads.