3D printing went mainstream in 2025 thanks to a company that rose to fame with a very successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2022. Fast forward a few years, and that company, BambuLab, is the most valued 3D printer manufacturer in the world.
I've been into 3D printing for a very long time and have seen their line of printers evolve, and even got myself a few. BambuLab's "it just works" philosophy, slightly higher price point, and a fairly closed ecosystem, remind me a lot of Apple, an approach not many have mastered in the past.
And like Apple, BambuLab understood something crucial: selling hardware is just the beginning. They built an entire ecosystem around their printers, accessible through their mobile app where you can browse ready-to-print designs and start printing from your phone. It's so easy a 6 year old can do it. I've seen it.
That ecosystem strategy paid off in a big way in 2025.
At the tail end of the year, after releasing 3 new printers, everything in BambuLab's online store was out of stock. Printers, parts, and even the plastic for printing. I figured it was related to their Black Friday and end of year sales, but I wasn't sure just how big these two campaigns would be.
The printers require a mobile app for setup, which means I can track just how well that ecosystem strategy performed using Appfigures Intelligence!
So, how many units did it sell?
The end of 2024 was the biggest BambuLab has seen up to that point. According to Appfigures Intelligence, BambuLab's app, Bambu Handy, was downloaded 420K times between October and December. One download may not equal exactly one printer, but the number is probably close. That's a lot of 3D printers for a 3-month stretch.
2025 saw the release of the H2 series printer which quickly became a favorite for many. That, combined with an even earlier start to a Black Friday campaign, pushed sales to a new all-time high.
We estimate that Bambu Handy was downloaded a little over 1 million times between October and December of 2025 from the App Store and Google Play. Although downloads rose on both store at the same rate, the App Store contributed a majority of the downloads.
Zooming out, Bambu Handy saw 2M downloads in 2025 according to our estimates vs. 700K in 2024. More than half of those came from the US with Germany second-largest by volume and the rest spanning 100 countries.
This is what an ecosystem looks like in practice: 2M downloads, spanning 100 countries, with users who aren't just buying a printer—they're buying into a platform. BambuLab's success shows that building an ecosystem around your app, service, or game is an investment that pays in dividends. It worked for 3D printers and it can also work for your app.
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