This year, people have nearly doubled their spending on generative AI apps when it comes to both time and money, proving the rise of this technology’s popularity.
In the first half of 2025, GenAI apps pulled in roughly US$1.9bil (RM8bil) of in-app purchase revenue versus US$932mil (RM3.9bil) in the second half of 2024, according to a new report from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which looks at data from Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The exponential growth in hours users spent on generative AI apps is notable as well. Users spent a whopping 15.6 billion hours using these apps in the first half of 2025 – which is about an 84 percent jump from the second half of 2024.
Generative AI apps were downloaded 1.7 billion times in the first half of 2025, a jump of 67 percent since the second half of 2024. ChatGPT dominated the global downloads, followed by DeepSeek and Google Gemini, although Gemini overtook DeepSeek in the US market.
Usage patterns of these apps are starting to look similar to those of search engines. Users averaged 7.8 sessions per day on ChatGPT in the first half of 2025, which just exceed the 7.4 average daily sessions users spent using top search engine and browser apps. They still spent, on average, more time daily on search engine apps, but that difference is narrowing.
“The potential for ChatGPT to disrupt traditional search is already apparent. Over the past few years, ChatGPT’s engagement metrics have soared, now rivalling those of leading search engine and browser applications,” the report reads.
And when it comes to the average number of days certain apps are used on a monthly basis, Google still reigns supreme. But the report notes ChatGPT was about on par with X and Reddit in terms of days used in June 2025.
“It’s notable that ChatGPT (and AI assistants more broadly) has yet to fully replace search engines like Google when it comes to consistent usage,” the report states.
What are users spending all that time doing with generative AI?
According to Sensor Tower’s report, 8.3 percent of ChatGPT prompts in the second quarter of 2025 involved tech support and troubleshooting; followed by writing and editing, which accounted for about 7.7 percent of prompts. Education and teaching, coding help, and health and wellness rounded out the top five.
“As ChatGPT has expanded its user base, its use cases have become more diverse,” the report states. – Inc./Tribune News Service
