Lots of Money for the Chat GPT App That's in Command of the App Store

Ariel Ariel
4/28/23

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Drop Everything and Do This!. Check out the full article for more insights.


OpenAI is really missing out on lots of revenue by not publishing a native mobile app. Some of you might be thinking, "it's probably not that much money...".

But it is. It really is.

Developers have flocked to the App Store and Google Play to bring ChatGPT to mobile phones. And in most cases, the apps don't innovate or improve, just make it available on mobile.

And the rewards are grand.

Although 400 more apps mentioning "ChatGPT" were released to the App Store and Google Play in April, one has risen to the top of the charts.

Chat with Ask AI is the app, and if you've been looking at the top charts, you probably saw it up high. It's the #3 most downloaded app in the US App Store right now and 22nd on Google Play.

There are a handful of others all over the top charts, but I'm going to focus on this one because its trend is the strongest.

Launched a little over a month ago, Ask AI, which could do a slightly better job with its ASO, has already made its way into more than 5.1M iOS devices.

Those downloads were a direct result of the AI wave that's washing over pretty much everything right now, but also a result of heavy investment in Apple Search Ads.

According to our ASA Intelligence, the app is paying Apple for discovery in more than 1,800 keywords in the US. That's a lot of keywords!

This isn't what's grand - the real reason I brought up Ask AI is its revenue. The developers can't buy that.

The app started monetizing at the end of March, just about a month ago, and in that month, Ask AI has already earned $2.3M of net revenue from the App Store. And that's just from the App Store + after handing Apple its fees.

A crude calculation shows Ask AI is making about $0.45 from every download, probably enough to continue funding its ASA campaigns, which means this growth will continue.

Given the success of this trend, I really don't see any reason to not wrap ChatGPT into a mobile app and toss it into the mix with everyone else. It doesn't mean it'll succeed, but you'd have to do so little to ride this wave not doing it feels like a missed opportunity.

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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.

Tagged: #ai #business

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