2025 State of Mobile: AI is Everywhere on Mobile, from Productivity to Finance

AI continued its rapid ascent on mobile in 2024 and it has already become a billion dollar industry. Generative AI, including AI Chatbot and AI Art Generator apps, earned nearly $1.3 billion in global in-app purchase (IAP) revenue across iOS and Google Play in 2024. This was a near 180% increase year-over-year (YoY). Worldwide Generative AI app downloads approached 1.5 billion in 2024 (+92% YoY).

In Sensor Tower’s 2025 State of Mobile report, we highlight 10 different app categories, including the latest trends from the fastest growing of all, Generative AI. Dive deep into the latest trends across 23 markets and uncover which apps broke through in 2024. And for more analysis, check out our blog post highlighting the biggest trends of the year.

AI Chatbot Growth Continues as Tech Giants Enter the Space

Generative AI apps exploded onto the scene in late 2022 with interest in the technology surging following the release of ChatGPT. Other competitors quickly attempted to capture some of this market. IAP revenue from AI Chatbot and AI Art Generators climbed from $30 million in 2022 to $455 million in 2023 to nearly $1.3 billion in 2024. Downloads saw a similar trajectory, approaching 1.5 billion in 2024. AI Chatbots saw the bulk of the growth in 2024 – downloads for the subgenre climbed 119% YoY to 427 million in Q4 2024. AI Art Generators trailed with 85 million downloads, up 21% YoY.

While ChatGPT is the clear leader with roughly 40% of global Generative AI app IAP revenue and 23% of downloads in 2024, there has been plenty of room for other apps to emerge. By the end of 2024, some of the biggest tech companies in the world have rolled out their AI chatbots, including Google Gemini, ByteDance's Doubao, and Microsoft Copilot. Sixteen different Generative AI apps reached at least $10 million in IAP revenue in 2024, and 25 had more than 10 million downloads. And this is all before the recent buzz around DeepSeek, the latest breakout AI Chatbot to enter the space in early 2025. Check out our recent analysis to see how DeepSeek’s launch stacks up against competitors like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.

More Than Just Chatbots: AI Has Spread Across Verticals

AI on mobile has spread far beyond chatbots and art generators. Looking for AI-related terms like "AI" and "GPT" in app names and descriptions helps identify which categories are frequently promoting their new AI features. While AI terms were most commonly mentioned by mobile games through 2017, non-game categories like Photo & Video slowly started to lean into AI over the next five years. And app developers were quick to respond to interest in AI in 2023 – the number of apps adding AI-related terms to their app names or descriptions more than doubled compared to 2022, with categories including Productivity, Utilities, and Education seeing a particularly large surge.

The number of apps adding AI-related terms declined in 2024, but interest remained high. More than 3,000 apps mentioned AI for the first time in 2024, including more than 500 games and more than 300 Utilities and Education apps.

The use of AI technology is also becoming much more widespread. Fifteen different categories had at least 100 apps add AI-related terms over the past two years alone. This included the expected categories like Productivity, Photo & Video, and Education, and various other categories across the mobile space like Lifestyle, Finance, Music, and Shopping. Overall, apps mentioning AI were downloaded 17 billion times in 2024 – approximately 13% of all app downloads in the year. App developers will continue to monitor the latest advances in their space and see which new and creative AI features are popular for their vertical.

This and More in 2025 State of Mobile

Sensor Tower’s 2025 State of Mobile Report dives deep into regional and category-level market trends made possible by our award-winning digital market insights platform. Claim your copy of the State of Mobile 2025 today!