ChatGPT is no doubt one of the most important things that happened in technology this year. Controversial, sure, but also explosive.
It took over the web, Twitter feeds, and the news in a very short span of time and sprouted many startups.
What it didn't have early on is a mobile app, leaving the door open for 3rd parties using its API to do that.
But then OpenAI, ChatGPT's maker, released an official app. Some thought it would crush all others overnight, but it didn't.
The official ChatGPT app launched to much fanfare, which led to a lot of downloads, but two months after, the downloads haven't grown much. Instead, they dropped.
Since hitting launch peak back in late May, ChatGPT's downloads dropped 58%. According to our estimates, ChatGPT peaked at 387K daily downloads at the end of May, and this Wednesday saw 162K downloads.
I had expected the trend to move in the other direction, but as I've said before, ChatGPT is a really cool technology, but for most people, it's just too raw to use daily.
Combined with the lack of an Android version, I'm less surprised the growth isn't there.
But what about revenue?
Things are a bit different there. And before you stop me and say most of ChatGPT's subscriptions are on the web, let's have a look at the numbers and the growth.
According to our estimates, ChatGPT saw $782K of net revenue in May, right after launching. And that's net, so it's what OpenAI gets to keep after Apple takes its fees.
The total rose to $1.5M in June, roughly double. Considering it was ChatGPT's first full month, the growth makes sense.
July isn't over, but we forecast ChatGPT will see net revenue from the App Store rise to $1.8M.
20% isn't a lot when you consider the explosiveness of ChatGPT, but it beats the drop in downloads.
For context, the leading 3rd party ChatGPT app, Ask AI, saw $3.6M in net revenue from the App Store in June. Ask AI is also available on Google Play, where it saw $1.1M in net revenue in June.
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