By 2025, consumers will spend more money on non-gaming mobile apps than on games for the first time, according to findings from a market intelligence firm. Tower Sensor District yearly “State of Mobile” report.. While this milestone has been seen in certain markets, like the US., or during a given quarter2025 marks the first time it will happen globally. Worldwide, consumers spent an estimated $85 billion on apps last year, representing a 21% year-over-year increase. The figure is also almost 2.8x the amount spent just five years ago.
Generative AI, a trend defined last year, led revenue growth, as in-app purchase revenue in this category more than tripled to $5 billion in 2025. Downloads of AI applications also increased, doubling annually to reach 3.8 billion.
The growth of the segment can be attributed to several factors. For one, the popularity of AI assistants among consumers is a big driver, with all of the top 10 apps by download being AI assistants. This group is led by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and DeepSeek. ChatGPT alone generated $3.4 billion in global in-app purchase (IAP) revenue – a figure we reported the end of last year.
In 2025, consumers will spend 48 billion hours in generative AI applications, or 3.6x the total time spent in 2024 and 10x the level seen in 2023. Session volume, meaning the number of times users open and use applications, will exceed one trillion in 2025. Note, this figure is increasing faster than downloads, adding new users faster than downloads, adding new users.
Another factor driving the revenue and adoption of AI applications is that big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and X have invested heavily in AI assistants to challenge ChatGPT. Over the past year, they have rapidly rolled out new capabilities, improving in areas like coding assistance, content creation, reasoning, task execution, accuracy, and more. The report specifically mentions improvements in image and video generation, such as the GPT-4o ChatGPT image generation model released in March, and Google’s Nano Banana.
Among the top AI publishers, OpenAI and DeepSeek accounted for almost 50% of global downloads, up from 21% in 2024. Meanwhile, large technology publishers increased their market share from 14% to almost 30% during the same period, many of ChatGPT’s competitors like Nova, Codeway, and Chat Smith.
The report also highlights the role mobile is playing 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 (110M) accessed the assistant exclusively on mobile devices. In 2024, for comparison, only about 13 million users will be mobile only.
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Beyond assistants, other popular AI apps include AI music generation app Suno; ByteDance’s text-to-video app, Jimeng AI; and AI companion apps like Character.ai and PolyBuzz.
However, AI was not the only revenue driver last year, Sensor Tower found. Other applications, including in categories like social media, video streaming, and productivity, also helped boost growth, the report noted. For example, consumers spend an average of 90 minutes per day on social media applications, totaling nearly 2.5 trillion hours, up 5% annually.