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TikTok was the most-downloaded app worldwide in 2025, according to Sensor Tower—but the bigger story was the widening gap between app installs and app spending. Generative-AI services, social platforms, short-form video and productivity apps attracted new attention and money, while mobile-game downloads fell by roughly 7% for the year.
That does not mean games stopped making money. Mobile-game in-app-purchase revenue still approached $82 billion and rose about 1.3%. The market was shifting from an install-growth business toward one built on retention, recurring payments and extracting more value from existing users.
TikTok led on three different measures
Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2026 report ranked TikTok first globally for 2025 downloads. It also identified TikTok as the worldwide leader in in-app-purchase revenue and total time spent.
Those are separate claims, however. A download is an estimated new install, not a unique person, active user, daily user or measure of how many devices have the app installed. Likewise, in-app-purchase revenue does not include every form of advertising, web-based payment or enterprise revenue.
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| Measure | TikTok’s reported position | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Global downloads | No. 1 | More estimated new installs than any other app in Sensor Tower’s worldwide ranking. |
| In-app-purchase revenue | No. 1 | The leading app on the report’s consumer IAP measure. |
| Total time spent | No. 1 | Users collectively spent more time in TikTok than in any other app measured. |
| Social media | Leading app | TikTok remained the strongest global social-media performer, alongside major competitors such as Instagram. |
A global ranking also does not mean TikTok was the top app in every country or on both operating systems in every market. Android and iOS audiences differ substantially, and local rankings can be shaped by regulation, income, distribution and cultural preferences. In the United States, for example, TikTok faced continuing regulatory and political uncertainty during the period covered.
The app economy grew, but the download picture is less simple
Sensor Tower estimated that combined downloads across iOS and Google Play edged up 0.8% to nearly 150 billion in 2025. Appfigures, using a different dataset and methodology, estimated 106.9 billion installs, down from 109.8 billion in 2024. Its figures were reported by TechCrunch.
These totals should not be combined or treated as a direct contradiction. Research firms may differ in their store coverage, treatment of reinstalls, app inclusion rules, geographic estimates and modeling. The more reliable shared conclusion is that global install growth was weak, while monetization accelerated.
Sensor Tower put total mobile in-app-purchase and paid-app revenue at $167 billion, up 10.6% year over year. Non-game apps surpassed games in consumer spending for the first time. Non-game IAP revenue grew 21%, compared with roughly 1.3% growth for games.
This is an important distinction for anyone assessing the app industry financially. More downloads do not necessarily mean more revenue, and fewer downloads do not automatically mean a category is becoming unprofitable.
ChatGPT and AI apps reshaped the growth rankings
Artificial intelligence was one of the clearest sources of new mobile demand in 2025. Sensor Tower reported that generative-AI app downloads approximately doubled to 3.8 billion. Consumer in-app-purchase revenue from those apps exceeded $5 billion, and users spent about 48 billion hours in generative-AI apps.
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ChatGPT’s downloads increased 148% year over year, helping it reach second place in Sensor Tower’s global download ranking. It was also the leading AI app by downloads and the third-highest-grossing app overall, behind TikTok and Google One.
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The commercial significance of AI was not simply that consumers tried new apps. Growth in sessions outpaced growth in downloads, suggesting that usage was moving beyond one-time experimentation toward repeat behavior. Subscription pricing also gave AI services a direct path to recurring consumer revenue.
These figures refer to estimated mobile-app downloads, usage and IAP—not total company revenue. They also describe AI assistants and generative-AI services, not every app that added an AI feature.
Games lost downloads, not necessarily their business
Sensor Tower’s annual analysis indicated that mobile-game downloads declined by approximately 7% in 2025. Its separate fourth-quarter index reported a sharper 10.7% year-over-year decline for game downloads in Q4. Those numbers cover different periods: one is an annual result and the other is a single quarter.
At the same time, mobile-game IAP revenue reached nearly $82 billion, up about 1.3%. Sensor Tower also reported a slight increase in time spent on games. The pattern points to a mature category with weaker user acquisition but resilient monetization.
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Strategy was a notable exception. Sensor Tower’s gaming coverage identified strategy as the only cited genre that gained across revenue, downloads and time spent. Last War: Survival and Whiteout Survival were among the leading mobile-game revenue performers in 2025.
A category-wide decline can therefore coexist with successful genres and blockbuster titles. The strongest games may be retaining users longer, increasing payer conversion or generating more spending through events and live-service features even as they attract fewer first-time installers.
Why game downloads are under pressure
A mature smartphone market
Mobile is no longer primarily an adoption story. Most smartphone users already have established apps for communication, entertainment, finance, shopping and social networking. Winning a new install is harder when users already have familiar alternatives and limited storage, time and attention.
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As acquisition costs rise, publishers have stronger incentives to judge campaigns by payback period, retention and lifetime value rather than install volume alone. Sensor Tower describes gaming as moving toward efficiency: publishers are trying to acquire users who are more likely to remain active and spend.
More competitors for the same attention
Games now compete with TikTok, Instagram, streaming video, short-form drama, AI assistants, sports, shopping and financial apps. Sensor Tower estimated that users spent nearly 2.5 trillion hours on social-media apps in 2025—more than 90 minutes per day for the average mobile user.
That does not prove TikTok directly caused game downloads to fall. It does show that entertainment and utility apps are competing in a broader attention economy, where the same user time and advertising budgets are available to many categories.
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Post-pandemic normalization
Mobile gaming experienced unusually strong usage and download levels during the pandemic. A later slowdown is better understood as normalization and market maturation than as evidence that mobile gaming has disappeared.
How games are making more from fewer new installs
Revenue can rise without a comparable increase in downloads when publishers improve the economics of the users they already have. Common levers include:
- Retention: Better onboarding and ongoing content keep players active for longer.
- Live operations: Seasonal events, updates and collaborations create repeated reasons to return.
- Subscriptions and battle passes: Recurring or scheduled purchases can make revenue more predictable.
- Payer conversion: A larger share of active players can be encouraged to make a first purchase.
- Lifetime value: Publishers can accept slower acquisition if the resulting cohorts produce stronger long-term returns.
- Reactivation: Marketing can target former players who already understand the game instead of paying to educate entirely new audiences.
This model brings trade-offs. It can improve financial efficiency, but it also increases reliance on a smaller group of high-value players. A publisher may report stable revenue while having weaker reach, fewer new users or greater exposure to churn among its most important customers.
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Game publishers
Download rank is no longer a sufficient health check. Publishers should track retention by cohort, revenue per install, payer conversion, lifetime value, campaign payback and the performance of live content. A game with fewer installs can be healthier than one with a large but unprofitable acquisition spike.
Social and entertainment platforms
Large platforms benefit from concentrated attention, but they must still convert that attention into advertising, commerce, subscriptions or creator-led transactions. Time spent may matter more than raw install volume once an app has broad distribution.
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AI services have demonstrated unusually strong download momentum, but converting curiosity into durable subscriptions remains the central challenge. High usage does not automatically equal profitable usage, particularly when inference and infrastructure costs are significant.
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Marketers
Campaigns should be evaluated against the quality of acquired users, not just cost per install. TikTok can be attractive for products with strong short-form creative and creator-led discovery, while Apple Search Ads may suit apps with clear high-intent App Store demand. Google App Campaigns can provide broad automated distribution when an app has enough conversion data and creative assets.
Investors and household investors
Download growth alone is a weaker indicator of app-company health. Retention, recurring revenue, subscription conversion, time spent, user monetization and cohort payback provide a more useful view of whether growth is durable. App-store estimates are not the same as audited company disclosures, so they should be treated as market intelligence rather than exact financial statements.
Consumers
The shift may bring more useful subscription apps and richer game content, but it can also mean more aggressive monetization. Consumers should distinguish between a genuinely valuable recurring service and a game or app designed to encourage frequent small purchases. Checking subscription terms, renewal dates and in-app spending limits can help prevent engagement from turning into an unexpected recurring expense.
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How to read the numbers correctly
- Downloads are not users: They may include repeat installs and do not measure active engagement.
- Global is not local: A worldwide leader may rank differently in the United States, India, China, Brazil or Western Europe.
- IAP is not total revenue: Estimates may exclude advertising, web payments, enterprise contracts and other income.
- Gross and net figures differ: Some sources report broader consumer spending, while others may estimate revenue after app-store fees.
- Estimates are not audited accounts: Sensor Tower and Appfigures model market activity; companies may report different figures under different definitions.
- Category trends hide winners: A decline in game downloads does not mean every genre, publisher or title declined.
For example, Appfigures explicitly identifies its December 2025 download and revenue figures as estimates and reports revenue after store fees in that analysis. Those numbers should not be directly compared with Sensor Tower’s broader annual totals without aligning the definitions.
Bottom line: a change in mobile economics
2025 was not the year mobile games disappeared. It was the year the mobile economy became less dependent on adding new installs and more dependent on converting attention into recurring revenue.
TikTok led Sensor Tower’s global download, IAP-revenue and time-spent measures, while ChatGPT and other AI services created a new source of mobile growth. Games lost download momentum, but their nearly $82 billion in IAP revenue showed that a mature category can remain commercially powerful by retaining users and monetizing them more effectively.
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