Mobile users globally spent $171 billion across the App Store, Google Play, and third-party Android app stores in China in 2023.
This was revealed in the latest State of Mobile 2024 report released by app intelligence provider data.ai. The 2023 spending represents a 3% increase when compared with 2022. However, app downloads only increased by 1% last year at 257 billion.
According to the report, consumer spending on non-game apps grew 11% year-over-year in 2023 to reach $64 billion. Social apps and the creator economy drove this growth with TikTok helping to lead the way.
In December last year, Nairametrics reported that Bytedance’s short video platform, TikTok, generated $3.8 billion in consumer spending from the App Store and Google Play Store in 2023 to bring its total revenue to $10 billion.
Time spent on social apps
The report shows that the time mobile users spend on social apps on Android phones shows no signs of slowing, climbing 9% in 2023 to more than 2.3 trillion hours.
Consumer spending growth also remained strong at 13% year-over-year to nearly $9 billion in 2023.
Top social platforms are continuing to unlock monetization strategies outside of advertising, with TikTok, the best app monetizer in the history of the app stores, as a prime example.
- “Consumers are shifting their spending habits. Popularized by TikTok, they are opting to spend directly in the app via ‘tips’ to their favourite content creators, opening the door for subscriptions and IAPs,”ai stated.
AI apps
Data.ai noted that app owners capitalized on the AI buzz last year to attract more users. According to the report, more than 4,000 apps added the word “chatbot” to their app descriptions, and more than 3,500 added “gpt,”. In addition, 2,500 apps launched in 2023 with “chatbot” in their description — which the firm says is nearly double the apps launched in the previous four years combined.
- Outside of AI apps themselves, other apps adopting AI features also did well in 2023. 20 apps that added such features saw 11% year-over-year growth in downloads, data.ai found. 13 of the 20 (65%) also saw positive growth.
The firm also cited generative AI advances as helping to fuel consumer spending last year.
The genAI app market expanded by 7x, leading to new consumer experiences like AI chatbots and AI art generators. Top apps included ChatGPT, Ask AI, and Open Chat, in terms of consumer spend.
Data.ai noted that AI app popularity was “fairly global,” but the genre didn’t rank among the breakout genres in China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
