This Week in Apps - Big Opportunities for AI Apps

This Week in Apps is a short, no-fluff, round-up of interesting things that happened in the mobile industry. Here are our top highlights.

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U.S. Revenue Index (vs. 30 days ago)

Special Edition

Hi! We just published the ultimate industry report on the AI app market, covering the scale, trends, and opportunities in the $2B AI app industry. In this week's special edition, I'm sharing my top five highlights from the 80+ page AI industry report.

Insights

1. AI Apps are a $2B Opportunity and Thin Wrappers Make More Than You Think

I get asked all the time if there's still money in AI, and my response is always an immediate funny look because AI apps are making more money than ever before!

And this has nothing to do with any of the DeepSeek news.

In fact, our latest AI industry report shows AI apps generating more than $2B in 2025 - and that's a conservative estimate.

Where's all that money going?

For the report, we analyzed thousands of AI-first apps, meaning apps that didn't just bolt AI on, and categorized them into one of 12 categories. It took a good amount of time, but gave ys a reliable dataset of AI app categories that we can analyze and track.

Looking at the top 1,000 apps by revenue, our report shows that General Assistants (aka. thin wrappers) are the biggest winners so far. Since 2023, the category earned $726M from the App Store and Google Play. This total represents what users paid (aka gross revenue).

It's important to note that our General Assistants category does not include ChatGPT, Claude, and other first-party models with an app. We put those into the Core Models category. This revenue comes entirely from third-party apps that ride those technologies.

ChatGPT drove the Core models category, which is the smallest because it includes the actual models, to $541M in gross revenue, according to our estimates. I expect this category to continue growing in 2025, but this isn't where the opportunity is for developers.

Graphics Generators, which were all the rage before ChatGPT took over, along with Photo & Video Editors, saw $210M. A far cry from thin wrappers, which should make you think, "is my app doing too much?". It just might.

The Utilities category rounds out the top with $69M in gross revenue. Not a lot in comparison to the rest, but has been growing fast in 2024.

Demand for AI apps is skyrocketing and I don't expect it to stop in 2025. If January is any indication, AI will rise even faster this year. Check out the trends for yourself on page 10 of the report.

2. The Opportunities in AI Apps No One's Talking About Right Now

It's no secret that AI apps are one of the fastest-growing trends, generating millions for developers. If you're thinking, "all the opportunities must be gone by now" you will be incorrect.

Releasing a thin wrapper in 2025 isn't likely to generate the amount of money it did back in early 2023, but almost every other category is booming!

I combined a few datasets I took from our AI market report to highlight the categories you should be looking at if you want to get in on the action:

The combination of revenue, number of apps from the category in the Top 1,000, and year-over-year growth rate makes it very easy to see where you should focus if you want to ride this wave.

I omitted the Core Models and General Assistants categories from this analysis because building a new LLM is not for most of us and General Assistants are not only the most saturated category but also the one with the least revenue growth.

The First Obvious Opportunity

At the top of the opportunities list is the Utilities category. It was 5th in terms of overall revenue, isn't as crowded the Graphics Generators and Photo & Video Editors, and saw year-over-year revenue grow 2,990% in 2024. The most of all categories in the report.

The Utilities category is pretty broad, containing apps that identify plants and coins, apps that help with interior design, and others. I expect we'll see a lot more growth in this category as AI adds convenience to these kinds of tasks.

The Second Obvious Opportunity

The other very obvious opportunity is a bit smaller, but also growing fairly quickly. Voice records may have only generated $24M so far, per the report, but that's grown 2,270% in 2024.

The trends (on page 77 of the report) slope down a bit in Q4, but I expect to see more apps come into this category in 2025 and revive the exponential growth the category saw for most of 2024.

That said, every category grew at least three digits which indicates there's a lot of hunger for the kind of convenience AI can bring via app.

Check out the growth rates for all categories on page 31 of the report.

3. We Ranked Every AI App and Here Are the highest Earners

Can you guess which AI app is making the most money? If you've been listening to me for long enough, you know the answer is ChatGPT. Our AI report confirms it. We estimate that since 2023, ChatGPT's mobile app grossed $529M.

Does anyone else still have a chance?

Yes, yes they do.

ChatOn, a wrapper on top of ChatGPT, is the second-highest earner in our list. Our App Intelligence shows it grossed $135M in the last two years. That's more than most apps generated in the last 5 years!

Chat & Ask AI by Codeway came in third in our ranking. If you remember 2023, you'll remember Ask AI being one of the first thin wrappers to hit the App Store even before ChatGPT released its mobile app. Being early paid off and landed the app $109M of gross revenue in the last two years, based on the report.

Third place ChatBox and fifth place AI Chat Smith combined for $149M of gross revenue, according to our estimates.

You know what else? The two are also thin wrappers. In fact, the entire top 10 highest-earning AI apps are all General Assistants. I didn't expect that when I first looked at the data and had to pull it twice to make sure.

I said this before, but it's worth asking again - is your app doing too much? Grab the full report for a deeper dive into the General Assistants category (page 36).

4. The US is the Most Lucrative Market for AI Apps, But It's Not the Only One

The rise in demand for AI apps is a global trend, especially when looking at where the downloads are coming from, but revenue is a bit different - and that's important for app makers to know.

We broke down consumer spending on AI apps by country and ranked every country. Can you guess who's at the top?

You probably guessed right - the US. The US is responsible for 64% of all AI app revenue going back to the beginning of 2023, when this trend started.

The UK, Germany, Canada, and China make up the top five, each with 6%, 5%, and 4% x2 share of revenue. Although small, these still represent more than $100M in consumer spending on AI apps in each of these countries.

For developers of AI apps, focusing on the US may seem intuitive but where there's money there's competition. The opportunity in the "smaller" markets is much easier to benefit from, and smart developers know this and optimize for it.

Because even though the US is bigger, demand across the globe is growing in pretty much the same direction - the up-and-to-the-right kind.

Our AI report shows that quarterly revenue has risen consistently in the US and worldwide since the beginning of 2023, hitting an all-time high at the end of 2024 with $221M from the US and $150M coming in from the other top 10 countries.

That represents a 16% increase from Q3 for the US but more than double, 32%, growth for the other countries.

I expect to see demand in and out of the US to continue growing but outside of the US, where saturation hasn't hit yet because everyone's focused on the US, competition will be far less challenging, enabling some to grow quickly.

It won't last long, so make sure to check all 10 Top Markets charts in the report (starting with page 12).

5. Not All AI Apps Belong To the Young

If I asked you to guess the age of users of AI apps, I'm sure you'll say "young", and you won't be wrong, but there's a lot more variation of age by category than I expected before analyzing the data for our AI industry report.

The 18-24 demographic is prevalent across all categories, but the range is quite wide.

Let me show you:

Let's start at the top. The Companion category, which includes apps that let you talk to a character of your choice, like Character AI, has the highest share of 18-24 year olds at 65%. It subsequently has the smallest share of all other groups.

Fairly intuitive, right?

At the other extreme, we have Transcription apps, where 18-24 year olds represent a 41% share while the 50+ category accounts for 23% of users - the highest share of 50+ users across all other categories except for Writing Tools, which has the same share.

Also intuitive.

Here's an interesting one though, when looking at the share of 25-34 year olds, it's the Music category that has the most of them - 20%! And you might think that's low, but the 25-34 group is fairly small in comparison. So is the 35-49 group.

The highest share across all categories belongs to the Health & Fitness category, where 34-49 year olds make up 19% of the user base. No other category has such a strong share.

And if you've looked at the chart and read the previous few sentences you may notice that while AI apps are predominantly used by the youngest group, the second biggest group is actually the oldest, at 50+.

Intuitive?

And guess what, there's an opportunity here! Demand is growing across all age groups but there are some there are less saturated and are easier to advertise to, and it isn't the 18-24 group. Combine knowing who your users are with which types of apps are less competitive yet growing and you have yourself a business plan.

You don't nee to thank me, but make sure to read the full AI report before you start building your next app.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.

All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.