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Key mobile app statistics for 2026:
app usage, revenue & success factors
February 10, 2026
Key takeaways for 2026
$1.2+ tn
expected mobile app market share by 2035
292 bn
forecasted global app downloads in 2026
3.5 h
average mobile time in apps spent per user
41 bn
total app consumer spending in Q2 2025
+11%
mobile app installs YoY growth in H1
2025
1.7 bn
global downloads of GenAI apps in H1 2025
Current mobile application market state
Market growth drivers
| As of 2026, there are over 8.9 billion mobile subscriptions globally, and the number is projected to exceed 9.4 billion by 2030. | |
|---|---|
| In December 2025, 54% of consumers globally and 53% in North America used mobile devices to access the internet. | |
| 5G networks carried 43% of mobile data traffic by the end of 2025 and are expected to cover 80% of the total mobile data traffic by 2030. |
Mobile app market details
| The global mobile application market size is estimated to reach $378 billion in 2026. Driven by the rising popularity of app-based services and the increasing adoption of smartphones, the market is expected to exceed $1,2 trillion by 2035 at a growth rate of 14.04%. | |
|---|---|
|
In 2025, the Asia Pacific region held the largest share of 33% in the global | |
| Asia ($130.1 billion), North America ($92.2 billion) and Europe ($43.8 billion) are projected to dominate the consumer iOS and Android spend in 2030. | |
| Central America is forecasted to see the highest growth in consumer mobile app spend with a CAGR of 12.0% from 2023 to 2030. | |
| In the fourth quarter of 2025, the Android operating system maintained its leading position globally, holding a market share of over 71%, while Apple's iOS accounted for approximately 27.93% of smartphones used worldwide. |
Market concentration
Concentrated
Fragmented
Mobile application market
Low
High
Market growth stage
Decelerating
Accelerating
Pace of market growth
Market characteristics. Industry competition
Low
High
Degree of innovation
Product/ solution launches
Impact of regulations
Solution substitutes
End-user concentration
Scheme title: Mobile application market industry dynamics
Data source: Grand View Research
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Mobile app usage statistics
| Over a third of Americans (31%) report checking their phones more than 50 times per day, with women more than men and Apple users more than Samsung or Google/Android users likely to check their phone more frequently. | |
|---|---|
| 77% of mobile users aged 18-29 (which includes GenZs and millennials) have at least one paid subscription they access through a mobile app; however, this figure drops to 44% for 65 and older age groups. | |
| Entertainment apps record the longest average session times among US users at 7.3 minutes, far exceeding those of the next-highest categories—health & fitness and news & magazines, both at 2.8 minutes. | |
| YouTube was the most popular app in the social networks category by time spent per month (11 hours and 32 minutes on average), followed by TikTok (9.05 hours) and Facebook (5.15 hours) in 2025. | |
| WhatsApp, Telegram, and Snapchat are the top three most popular messenger apps in the world. | |
| Mobile users collectively spent 15.6 billion hours in generative AI apps in H1 2025, or 86 million hours daily. The number of total sessions in generative AI apps reached 426 billion in this period, or an average of 50 sessions for every person in the world. | |
| Young men continue to be the largest demographic for AI assistants, with nearly 70% of ChatGPT users in the US being men and 64% of them under the age of 35. | |
| India, the United States, and Brazil were the top three countries by app downloads in 2025. | |
| The highest app download rate growth in 2025 was seen in South Africa, Hong Kong, and Austria - +17.85 %, +14.73 %, and +9.22 % respectively. | |
| On average, active users have from less than 10 up to 45 app sessions within a month. | |
| Among the top reasons for deleting mobile apps, customers name too many in-app ads (30%), the app failing to meet expectations (25%), unclear, broken, or slow experiences (19%), excessive push notifications or in-app messages (18%), and replacement with another app (18%). | |
| On average, over 95% of users churn after 30 days and less than 5% out of those 5% that stay will subscribe. |
Total app downloads | Share of global downloads | YoY growth % | |
|---|---|---|---|
India | 19.1B | 17% | -14.1% |
United States | 12.6B | 11.2% | -2.3% |
Brazil | 9B | 8.1% | -7.1% |
Indonesia | 6.1B | 5.5% | 0.8% |
Mexico | 4.5B | 4% | -6.5% |
China | 4.2B | 3.7% | 1.1% |
Turkey | 3.1B | 2.8% | -0.1% |
Philippines | 3B | 2.7% | 3.2% |
Germany | 2.6B | 2.3% | 4.1% |
United Kingdom | 2.6B | 2.3% | 9.1% |
Scheme title: Top 10 countries by app downloads (2025)
Data source: App downloads data by country: 2025 statistics and trends
Scheme title: App engagement score across categories | How many monthly active users return to the app
daily
Data source: Airship’s 2025 Mobile lifecycle benchmarks: engagement
Scheme title: Average number of days used per month for top generative AI apps
Data source: State of AI Apps Report 2025: AI Market Overview
Google Play vs App Store
The two app marketplaces targeting the most popular mobile ecosystems demonstrated no significant growth both in new app publications or download statistics over the past year. Alternative marketplaces, including Amazon App Store, gained modest traction in 2025 and continue to do so in 2026 and beyond, fueled by customers’ growing interest in alternative distribution models. This can indicate that the mobile app market has become saturated, with smartphone users becoming more selective in their app installations and prioritizing quality over quantity.
Scheme title: Projected mobile app downloads worldwide in 2026, by store (in billions)
Data source: Annual mobile app downloads worldwide by store 2026| Statista.
Google Play
Stricter technical and app quality requirements maintained by Google in 2025 keep the number of apps now available in Google Play below pre-2024 levels. However, the marketplace’s revenue still continues to grow, driven by in-app purchases and subscriptions.
| As of the beginning of 2026, there are 1.66 million Android apps in the Google play store, with the share of free apps around 97%. This is a slight increase compared to 2025, which saw a year-long reduction in total app listings. | |
|---|---|
| By taking comprehensive measures, including implementing AI-powered threat detection and applying stronger privacy policies, Google rejected the publication of 2.36 million policy-violating apps on Google Play and banned over 158,000 developer accounts that tried to publish harmful apps. | |
| An average of 40+ thousand new apps were launched on Google Play each month in 2025. | |
| China (130.3 billion), India (45.5 billion), and Brazil (12.4 billion) are expected to account for the highest number of Android app downloads in 2030. | |
| China ($48.4 billion), the United States ($29 billion), and Japan ($8.3 billion) are expected to become the top three markets by Android consumer spend in 2030. | |
| Games (21.17 billion), Entertainment (8.09 billion), and Finance (6 billion) were the three categories of apps most downloaded in 2025 from Google Play. | |
| Per-device spend on consumer Android apps is projected to skyrocket by 2030, reaching $99,88 in the US and $73,34 in Japan. | |
| In Q2 2025, in-app purchase revenue from non-gaming apps reached $20.9 billion, exceeding that of mobile games for the first time by $300 million. |
App Store
Although demonstrating lower app download rates than Google Play, Apple’s App Store consistently generates more revenue, largely due to the tendency of iOS users to spend more on paid apps.
| The Apple App Store segment is expected to dominate the market in 2026 with a 53,2% share due to the store’s customers having higher disposable incomes. | |
|---|---|
| The United States ($55 billion), China ($20.3 billion), and Japan ($20.1 billion) markets are expected to have the highest iOS consumer spend in 2030. These countries will also take the top three respective places as leading markets by iOS downloads. | |
| Games (7,37 billion), Business (1,12 billion), and Education (1,06 billion) were three categories with the most downloads on the App Store in 2025. | |
| Per-device spend on non-gaming iOS apps is expected to grow 2.4 times from 2020 to 2030, reaching $138,1 per year per mobile user in the US and $115,72 in Japan. | |
| The App Store outperformed Google Pay in revenue per install in 2025, with app revenue after 60 days reaching $0.38 for iOS apps versus $0.14 for Android. |
Trends across mobile app categories
Although mobile app categories vary in performance across regions, several global trends are shaping the mobile app market in 2026.
| ChatGPT (65 million), TikTok (37 million), and Instagram (35 million) were the three most downloaded apps in November of 2025 across Google Play and App Store. This ranking highlights the continued dominance of social media apps and the ongoing interest towards generative AI. | |
|---|---|
| Utility & Productivity, Entertainment, and Social Media are forecasted to become top app genres by 2030, reaching 33,7 billion, 16,7 billion, and 12,1 billion downloads respectively. | |
| Android users are expected to spend 7 trillion hours on mobile apps in 2030, with non-gaming apps experiencing a higher CAGR of 5% compared to games with the CAGR of 2.4% from 2024 to 2030. | |
| Downloads of generative AI apps (including AI assistants and content generators), neared 1.7 billion in H1 2025, with in-app purchase revenue reaching close to $1.9 billion. | |
| The number of downloads of AI assistants and chatbots reached 774 million in Q2 of 2025, while the downloads of AI content generation tools amounted to 137 million in the same period. 85% of downloads across these app subgenres originated from assistant apps like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and DeepSeek. | |
| AI assistants, AI content generators, and photo editing tools are the top three subgenres of apps equipped with AI in H1 of 2025. | |
| Non-gaming apps across a wide range of genres are increasingly integrating AI capabilities, with software, healthcare & wellness, jobs & education, and lifestyle & services leading the adoption in H1 of 2025. | |
| As for Q3 2025, the installation of finance apps increased 11% YoY globally, while sessions jumped 16%. By category, crypto apps were uncontested leaders, experiencing the highest YoY surge in installs (90%), while payment apps, the second-best performing category, saw an only 4% increase in installations. | |
| Global ecommerce app activity grew steadily in 2025, as installs and sessions at the end of H1 exceeded the yearly average by 16% and 11%. By category, marketplace & classifieds apps accounted for 60% of global sessions but only 20% of installs, while shopping apps comprised 76% of installs and 36% of sessions. | |
| The global wellness apps market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14,9% between 2025 and 2030. The exercise & weight loss segment will dominate the market and account for the largest share of revenue, followed by diet & nutrition apps, meditation apps, and tools for stress management. | |
| The size of the global video streaming market is projected to reach 416.8 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 21.5% from 2025 to 2030. This growth will be increasingly driven by mobile app users, as mobile phones account for a growing share of streaming viewership worldwide, and the overall increasing adoption of streamlining platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. | |
| The size of the global sports app market is projected to reach $13.22 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 10.64% from 2025 to 2034. Fan engagement and social sports apps segments are expected to be the highest-growing ones on this market in the coming years. | |
| App categories vary in how much they performed in 2025, with gaming apps taking the lead, followed by publications, utilities, entertainment, and finance verticals, while education, health & fitness, and food & drink turned out to be the lowest-performing categories. |
Business
Entertainment
Food & drink
Health &
fitness
Photo & video
Shopping
Travel
Education
Finance
Games
Lifestyle
Publications
Social
Utilities
Scheme title: App growth scores (combining installs, cost-efficiency, engagement, and retention) by
vertical in 2025
Data source: The mobile app growth report: 2025 edition | Adjust
Mobile app revenue & monetization trends
The revenue generated from in-app purchases and app subscriptions continues to rise, particularly for non-game apps, proving the effectiveness of recurring, engagement-driven monetization models.
| In the second quarter of 2025, total consumer spending on apps from both iPhone users and Android users amounted to around $41 billion, representing an 11,5% increase compared to the corresponding period in 2024. | |
|---|---|
| Eight out of ten categories of non-gaming apps saw revenue increase of at least 14% YoY in 2025. Productivity (45%), photo & video (40%), and utilities (33%) are three categories with the highest growth percentage. | |
| Non-gaming apps accounted for $19,4 billion of consumer spend in Q1 of 2025, demonstrating an impressive YoY growth of 23,7%. | |
| Game mobile apps accounted for the majority of consumer spend, exceeding $20 billion in Q1 of 2025, but the year-over-year growth was only 1%, with the gap between games and non-gaming apps closing fast. | |
| Travel apps have the highest median trial-to-paid conversion rate (48.7%), followed by the media & entertainment category (43.8%), which indicates that users of these apps find immediate value in them. | |
| Most AI apps see revenue per install of above $0.63 after 60 days, which is twice as high as the median ($0.31) and is only matched by apps from the health & fitness category (also $0.63). | |
| Longer trials ensure better conversion rates, with trials lasting 17–32 days demonstrating the highest median conversion at 45.7%. This suggests that giving users time to experience the application results in stronger purchase intent. | |
| On average, it takes 60 days for an app to reach a monthly revenue of $1,000, with apps from health & fitness, photo & video, and utilities categories showing the most consistent growth after this milestone. | |
| 30% of annual subscriptions get cancelled within the first month. Still yearly plans maintain the highest app retention rates (44.1%) compared to monthly (17%) and weekly (3.4%) plans. | |
| After 12 months of app usage, weekly subscriptions generate more user lifetime value (LTV) than monthly subscriptions. | |
| In 2025, the pricing points for subscription plans mostly stayed consistent with the previous year, with 1-week at $4.99, 1-month at $9.99, and 1-year starting at $29.99, which reflects companies’ ongoing encouragement of long-term commitments. However, the most expensive apps got even more expensive in 2025 compared to previous years. | |
| The majority of applications generate most of their revenue from Apple’s App Store, with over 67% of apps from every region getting at least 80% of their revenue from iOS users. As a result, very few apps rely on Google Play as the sole source of income. | |
| 35% of apps employ a mixed monetization strategy, combining subscriptions with consumables or lifetime purchases. This tendency is particularly strong in gaming and social & lifestyle apps. |
Scheme title: Quarterly worldwide in-app purchase revenue in USD
Data source: Q1 2025 Digital Market Index
Scheme title: Top markets for in-app purchase revenue
Data source: Q1 2025 Digital Market Index
Scheme title: Share of newly launched apps that hit revenue milestones in their first two years, by
category
Data source: State of Subscription Apps 2025 – RevenueCat
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Mobile app development statistics
As technologies evolve, mobile app development practices gradually transform and new development technologies emerge, making the development process more efficient and ensuring that the mobile apps align with the rising expectations of consumers.
| About 65% of international enterprises across industries have implemented mobile backend as a service (BaaS) platforms to support mobile app development. Fueled by the surge in mobile application usage and the rising demand for mobile integration, the mobile BaaS market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 45.7% from 2025 to 2033. | |
|---|---|
| The majority of mobile apps are developed using native technologies. On Apple’s App Store, 82% of apps are written in Swift, while on Google Play, 79% are built with Kotlin and 26% use Flutter. | |
| Over 60% of professional Android developers use Kotlin to build apps. | |
| Non-native development is expected to have consistent growth due to technological advancements and growing user expectations, with the cross-platform app development framework market reaching $47.61 billion in 2035. JavaScript frameworks (React Native, Ionic, etc.) are expected to dominate the market, while Dart frameworks, particularly Flutter, will be the fastest-growing segment. | |
| Businesses often opt for progressive web applications (PWA) to create mobile applications that load fast and provide offline capabilities, helping them expand their reach and increase customer engagement. For example, Starbucks’ PWA brought a twofold increase in daily active users and higher order completion rates compared to the native app. Such positive business outcomes drive the growth of the global PWA market, which is expected to expand from $5.23 billion in 2025 to over $21 billion by 2033 at a CAGR of 18.98%. | |
| 56,4% of GitHub users also utilized GhatGPT for writing code or learning programming languages in Q2 of 2025. | |
| Cybersecurity while maintaining smooth user experience and compliance with data protection regulations are the key challenges faced by mobile app developers that threaten to hinder market growth. | |
| 79% of developers think that AI and ML will significantly affect how mobile apps will be developed in the next 5 years, assisting specialists with real-time bug fixing and automation of code generation. |
Factors influencing mobile app success
With consumer preferences and habits permanently changing, companies can face challenges in driving sustained growth of their mobile applications. Focusing on critical mobile app aspects, such as performance, security, user experience, and app store optimization (ASO), can help companies increase the visibility of their mobile apps and foster long-term user engagement.
| 82% of mobile app users consider an application’s stability critical or very important, while 63% of them are ready to uninstall an app after three or fewer crashes. What is more, 81% of users would be very likely or somewhat likely to switch to a competitor due to app performance issues. | |
|---|---|
| 73% of mobile users frequently or occasionally stopped using an app because of frustrating visual or navigation issues, such as non-functional buttons or layout problems. | |
| 72% of mobile app users expect regular addition of new features and overall solution improvements. | |
| Including AI-related terms in app names or descriptions delivers a short-term uplift in downloads across platforms, with gains peaking at up to 4.1% within two months. | |
| 16.3% of global mobile app users refuse to use mobile apps |
Future forecasts for mobile apps market
| With consumers having become more willing to pay for premium features in mobile apps, it is projected that they will spend more on apps (at a CAGR of 11.1%) than on games (at a CAGR of 4.2%) by 2030. | |
|---|---|
| Having tried best-in-class app experiences, consumers now expect companies to create seamless journeys by integrating technologies, such as bots or virtual assistants (55%), augmented or virtual reality (55%), and AI applications (59%). | |
| Voice assistant applications are gaining traction, accounting for a market share of around $6 billion and expected to grow at a CAGR of 30.8% from 2025 to 2034. | |
| The number of monthly active users of augmented reality (AR) experiences on mobile devices is expected to rise to 1.19 billion by 2028. | |
| Companies should be prepared for a potential 25% decline in mobile app usage due to AI assistants that are likely to replace apps across different functions. In addition, there’s a chance that different brands and companies will consolidate their mobile apps to expand their user base and cover the app development and maintenance costs. |
Drive mobile app success with a trusted tech partner
With intense competition in the mobile app market, fast-paced technology shifts, changing user behavior, and evolving consumer expectations, companies can find it challenging to ensure the success of their mobile app initiatives. Collaborating with a reliable software development company provides them with expertise needed to navigate the market intricacies and mobile app development complexities. Itransition, a tech company with 15+ years of experience in mobile app development, helps companies implement robust, competitive mobile applications that drive user engagement, deliver long-term value to users, and support business growth.
FAQs
It’s nearly impossible to single out the number one app since there are many ways to define “number one” - most downloads, most active users, most used daily, etc. If we consider recent downloads, then ChatGPT has recently been the most downloaded app in the world in both the iOS App Store and Google Play. However, Facebook and YouTube still have the most active users monthly, which makes them the most used apps in the world. Finally, Instagram and TikTok also frequently rank among top apps by both downloads and active users.
YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are frequently named among the most used mobile apps in the world, though their rankings can vary by source and region.
Google apps, Facebook, and YouTube are consistently ranked among the most used apps in the US, with younger Americans, particularly GenZs, increasingly utilizing TikTok, which results in it also gaining ground.
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