Generative AI Turned Mobile Apps Into a $5B Category

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Generative AI was the single biggest driver behind mobile app revenue growth in 2025. In-app purchase revenue from AI apps more than tripled year over year, surpassing $5 billion, while downloads doubled to 3.8 billion. All top 10 AI apps by downloads were AI assistants — led by **OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and DeepSeek.

ChatGPT alone generated $3.4 billion in global mobile IAP revenue, highlighting just how quickly AI moved from experimentation to monetization. Improvements in reasoning, coding, image generation, and video creation — combined with fierce competition from Big Tech — turned AI assistants into must-have mobile utilities rather than novelty tools.

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feels like we’re finally seeing mobile grow up as a platform, not just a time killer