Mobile users worldwide spent $171 billion in China through third-party Android app shops, Google Play, and the App Store in 2023.
This was disclosed in data.ai’s newest State of Mobile 2024 study. When compared to 2022, 2023 spending reflects a 3% rise. Last year, however, app downloads climbed by only 1% to 257 billion.
According to the report, consumer spending on non-game apps would increase 11% year on year to $64 billion in 2023. This expansion was driven by social apps and the creator economy, with TikTok paving the way.
In December last year, Bytedance’s short video platform, TikTok, generated $3.8 billion in consumer spending from the App Store and Google Play Store in 2023, bringing its total income to $10 billion.
According to the estimate, mobile users’ time spent on social apps on Android phones would increase by 9% in 2023 to more than 2.3 trillion hours.
Consumer expenditure is expected to increase by 13% year on year to approximately $9 billion in 2023.
TikTok, the best app monetizer in the history of the app stores, is a prime illustration of how top social platforms are continuing to uncover revenue techniques other than advertising.
They are choosing to pay money directly in the app by giving “tips” to their favourite content makers, a trend made popular by TikTok, which makes room for IAPs and subscription fees,” AI said.
According to Data.ai, app owners used the AI hype last year to recruit more users. According to the research, over 4,000 apps added “chatbot” to their app descriptions, while over 3,500 added “gpt.”
Furthermore, 2,500 apps with the term “chatbot” in their description were released in 2023, which the firm claims is roughly quadruple the number of apps released in the preceding four years combined.
Other apps incorporating AI capabilities performed well outside of AI apps in 2023. The revenue of 20 apps that incorporated such features increased by 11% year over year growth in downloads, data.ai found. 13 of the 20 (65%) also saw positive growth.
Last year, the corporation also cited generative AI breakthroughs as helping to increase consumer spending.
The genAI app market grew sevenfold, resulting in novel user experiences such as AI chatbots and AI art generators. In terms of consumer spending, the top apps were ChatGPT, Ask AI, and Open Chat.
AI app popularity was “fairly global,” according to Data.ai, but the genre did not rank among the breakout categories in China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey.
