ChatGPT's Mobile Revenue Trades Stagnation for Growth

Has ChatGPT's revenue hit double digits yet? Yes. Is revenue still growing? Yes! Double digits? Yes!

March was a good month for ChatGPT's revenue, and even to its downloads. And also for its competitors.

Let's have a look at the numbers:

According to our App Intelligence, ChatGPT ended March with $13.2M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play - growing at a rate of 18% month-over-month. That's great news after growth flattened in February.

Net means what OpenAI gets to keep after giving Apple and Google their fees.

Looking at the monthly downloads trend, you wouldn't even notice OpenAI turned off new subscriptions for a month at the end of last year because this growth is so consistent.

The US continues to be ChatGPT's biggest money maker and was responsible for 41% of the total. The next biggest country, in terms of revenue, is Germany, with a 6% share of the total. That means there's a lot of opportunity out there.

What about the competition?

Before ChatGPT's mobile app came out, a third-party app called Ask AI dominated the App Store and Google Play. Ask AI was one of the first to leverage OpenAI's APIs to offer ChatGPT on mobile, and thanks to aggressive advertising, became the most successful.

Early on, it was even earning more than ChatGPT, but that changed in October. Five months later, is Ask AI still making money?

Yes, which surprised me a bit.

According to our estimates, Ask AI is still generating monthly revenue in the millions. It earned $3.4M in net revenue in March. Not as much as it earned at its peak ($4.8M in August), but not that far from it. And in March, Ask AI's revenue rose 5%.

What Ask AI does differently is it gives its users ways to leverage AI beyond a textbox. I talked about the concept of tools powered by AI vs AI a bunch over the last year and I think that's something ChatGPT's app is still lacking.

When OpenAI can figure that out it'll simply be unbeatable.