ChatGPT Pushes Bing's Downloads to All-Time High
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A few weeks ago Microsoft and OpenAI announced ChatGPT, which has and is currently all the rage in the tech world, will be getting native support in Bing, Microsoft's search engine.
Some called the move revolutionary and a Google killer while others seem to think this kind of functionality isn't what users expect from a search engine.
I can see both arguments but those aside, anything to do with ChatGPT is going to get lots of interest (like my last live stream) so I was curious to see if Bing's app is now soaring.
The quick answer is yes and no.
Let's have a look at the data.
In early 2022, Bing was seeing about 50K downloads per month from the App Store, according to our estimates. Downloads on the App Store grew a bunch in 2022 peaking at 127K in October but sloped down after.
In total, we estimate that Bing was downloaded a little over 800K times from the App Store in all of 2022, and that's across all countries.
A little over a week ago, the integration with ChatGPT launched into Bing's mobile app and downloads rose sharply. A combination of a waiting list many signed up for (devs, if you're not using this trick you're missing out), general curiosity about ChatGPT, and lots of ads, pushed Bing to its highest day of downloads!
Bing's App Store downloads peaked last Wednesday at more than 150K downloads in a single day, according to our estimates. They, again, sloped down right after, but continue to be higher than its average -- and not by a little.
So far, Bing was downloaded more than 700K times from the App Store since the new integration rolled out. That's almost the same as all downloads in 2021. Wow!
I'm not at all surprised by this. There's lots of excitement around ChatGPT right now and while it is free to access, it's almost always unavailable unless you have a premium account.
The real question still remains - is search better with a smart answering service?
We've seen the panic Google is in which led to a rushed announcement of Bard, Google's competitor. The rushed announcement promoted an incorrect answer. It wasn't an easy one to detect but some did and it became news instantly, dropping Google's stock by billions.
This panic could be an exaggeration but could also bring on real competition for Google, which is something Google isn't really used to.
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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.
