According to a report from market research firm Sensor Tower, based on data from Google Play and the App Store, the generative AI application market (GenAI) has seen explosive growth in the first half of 2025.
Global GenAI app downloads reached 1.7 billion, a significant increase compared to 1 billion in the second half of 2024. In the same period, in-app revenue also doubled, from $932 million to $1.87 billion.
The report also pointed out that users spent a lot of time on GenAI apps with a total time of more than 15.6 billion hours in the first half of 2025, up 85% from the 8.5 billion hours recorded in the second half of 2024. The number of sessions used in this period also exceeded 42.6 billion.
Asia is the market with the strongest growth in GenAI applications with 42.6% download market share, with the Indian and Chinese markets contributing significantly. From January to June 2025, the growth rate of GenAI application downloads in Asia will reach 80%, surpassing Europe (51%), North America (39%).
ChatGPT dominates global downloads among GenAI apps, followed by DeepSeek and Google Gemini, although Gemini has surpassed DeepSeek in the US market. ChatGPT is also the application with the highest in-app purchasing revenue globally, except for the Chinese market.
Sensor Tower experts also emphasized that ChatGPT's user retention rate is particularly high. According to the report, in the first half of 2025, users will use ChatGPT on average for more than 12 days per month, with the same frequency as popular social networking platforms such as X and Reddit, behind only Google.
Notably, the rate of ChatGPT usage on weekends also increased, showing that users are increasingly dependent on this AI chat application outside of working hours.
In addition to the search function, ChatGPT users also receive advice on health, shopping, personal finance, meal preparation...
