The latest report from market intelligence company Sensor Tower shows that the generative AI (GenAI) app market experienced explosive growth in the first half of 2025. Global GenAI app downloads reached 1.7 billion, a significant increase from 1 billion in the second half of 2024. During the same period, in-app purchase revenue also doubled, rising from 932 million to 1.87 billion dollars.
The report indicates that users spent significantly more time on GenAI apps, with a total of over 15.6 billion hours in the first half of 2025, nearly doubling the 8.5 billion hours recorded in the second half of 2024. The number of sessions during this period also exceeded 42.6 billion.
Asian Market Performs Strongly, ChatGPT Continues to Lead
Asia became the fastest-growing market for GenAI apps, holding the top position with a 42.6% share of download volume, where India and mainland China contributed significantly. In the first half of 2025, the download volume growth rate in the Asian market reached as high as 80%, far exceeding that of Europe (51%) and North America (39%). Although Latin America saw the fastest in-app purchase growth for GenAI apps, North America still maintained the leading position with a 40% share.
ChatGPT continues to maintain its leading position in the GenAI field. Sensor Tower noted that, except for China, ChatGPT is the GenAI app with the highest in-app purchase revenue globally. However, DeepSeek showed a stronger initial download performance in the Chinese market.
User reliance on various AI assistants continues to increase, with ChatGPT showing particularly strong user retention. According to the report, in the first half of 2025, users used ChatGPT for an average of over 12 days per month, with usage frequency comparable to popular social platforms such as X and Reddit, second only to Google. Notably, the weekend usage rate of ChatGPT has also increased, indicating that users are increasingly relying on this AI chat application outside of work hours.
The report compared ChatGPT's usage pattern with Google, pointing out that consumers are increasingly relying on ChatGPT as their primary information source, whether during work hours or leisure time. The daily usage time of ChatGPT (16 minutes) is rapidly closing the gap with popular search engines and browser applications (18.2 minutes).
In addition to search functions, users widely use ChatGPT to obtain advice on health, shopping, personal finance, and meal preparation. In the second quarter of 2025, over one-third of ChatGPT prompts were related to lifestyle and entertainment.
Sensor Tower's data shows that the user base of ChatGPT continues to grow across mobile applications and platforms. In the United States, more than 15% of ChatGPT users access it through both web and mobile devices, a proportion higher than Temu and Threads. However, compared to platforms like Google, Facebook, and YouTube, ChatGPT still has room for improvement in cross-platform user penetration.