Driven by demand for generative AI, consumer spending on apps will reach $150 billion globally in 2024, an increase of 13% year over year. Interest in AI apps has skyrocketed over the past year, according to the annual “State of Mobile” report published by app intelligence provider Sensor Tower (which acquired original report author Data.ai last March). It is said that he did. This led to more than 200% year-over-year growth in consumer spending on AI apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and ByteDance's Doubao, pushing total spending in this category to nearly $1.1 billion in 2024.
If this growth rate is maintained, apps in this category could be in the top 10 for consumer spending within a year, the company notes.
While the release of new AI models like OpenAI's GPT-4o last summer has pushed app revenue to sometimes record numbers, consumer demand for AI apps has only reached these peaks. It was consistent throughout the year. As a result, consumers will spend approximately 7.7 billion hours using AI apps in 2024, and apps that mention “AI” were also downloaded 17 billion times in the same year.
ChatGPT alone has reached 50 million monthly active users. Comparatively, it's faster than Temu, Disney+, and YouTube Music.
This shows that the demand for AI apps and apps with AI capabilities is still growing.
Other app categories that will see movement in 2024 include streaming, cryptocurrencies, e-commerce, and fintech.
Streaming apps saw a slight decline in engagement despite an increase in in-app revenue and downloads.
Crypto apps like Binance (6th place) and Tonkeeper (9th place) are among the top 10 financial apps by downloads in 2024. E-commerce apps Temu and Shein were ranked as the number 1 and number 2 apps respectively. Expansion in Europe, Latin America, and Asia expanded the retail subgenre.
Meanwhile, financial apps maintained double-digit year-over-year growth in time spent in 2024, approaching 7.5 billion downloads, an 8% increase over 2023.
Additionally, Sensor Tower said four games and one app became the latest games to reach the milestone of surpassing $1 billion in consumer spending in 2024. These include Last War, Whiteout Survival, Dungeon & Fighter, Brawl Stars, and WeTV.
The full report is available on Sensor Tower's site and includes analysis of the iOS App Store and Google Play, but not third-party app stores in other regions such as China.