Consumers spent more on mobile apps than games in 2025, driven by adoption of AI apps

In 2025, consumers spent more money on non-gaming mobile apps than on games for the first time, according to findings from the market intelligence firm. Sensor tower annual Mobile status report.. While this achievement was seen in certain markets, Like the United States., or During certain periods2025 was the first time this had happened globally. Worldwide, consumers spent nearly $85 billion on apps last year, representing a 21% year-over-year increase. This number was also nearly 2.8 times the amount spent just five years ago.

Generative AI, a defining trend over the past year, led revenue growth, with in-app purchase revenue in this category more than tripling to $5 billion in 2025. AI app downloads also grew, doubling year over year to reach 3.8 billion.

The growth of this sector can be attributed to several factors. For example, the popularity of AI assistants among consumers was a big driver, with the top 10 most downloaded apps all being AI assistants. This group was led by ChatGPT from OpenAI, Google Gemini, and DeepSeek. ChatGPT alone generated $3.4 billion in revenue from in-app purchases (IAP) globally – a number we reported on Late last year.

In 2025, consumers spent 48 billion hours in generative AI apps, or 3.6 times the total time spent in 2024 and 10 times the level seen in 2023. Session volume, the number of times users opened and used an app, surpassed a trillion in 2025. Notably, this number was growing faster than downloads, suggesting that existing users were deepening their engagement Faster than apps adding new users.

Another factor driving AI app revenue and adoption is that major tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and X are investing heavily in their own AI assistants to challenge ChatGPT. Over the past year, they’ve been rolling out new capabilities at a rapid pace, improving areas like programming assistance, content creation, ideation, task execution, accuracy, and more. The report specifically pointed to improvements in image and video creation, such as ChatGPT’s GPT-4o image generation model released in March, and Google’s Nano Banana model.

Among the top AI publishers, OpenAI and DeepSeek accounted for nearly 50% of global downloads, up from 21% in 2024. Meanwhile, big tech publishers increased their market share from 14% to nearly 30% over the same period, crowding out former ChatGPT competitors like Nova, Codeway, and Chat Smith.

The report also highlighted the role mobile plays in connecting users to generative AI services. Sensor Tower estimates that the total audience for AI assistants exceeded 200 million in the US by the end of the year, and more than half (110 million) were accessing assistants exclusively on mobile devices. In 2024, by comparison, there were only about 13 million mobile-only users.

In addition to assistants, other popular AI apps included Suno, an AI music generation app; ByteDance text-to-video app Jimeng AI; And AI companion apps like Character.ai and PolyBuzz.

However, AI wasn’t the only revenue driver last year, Sensor Tower found. Other apps, including those in categories such as social media, video streaming and productivity, also helped fuel growth, the report noted. For example, consumers spend an average of 90 minutes per day on social media apps, totaling nearly 2.5 trillion hours, up 5% year over year.