India's app market hits a record $345M quarter

India’s mobile app market generated a record $345 million in consumer spending during the second quarter of this year, up 35% from a year earlier, according to a new report from app-intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The gains were increasingly driven by generative AI, streaming, and productivity apps rather than gaming, as Indian consumers grew more willing to pay for digital subscriptions.

The quarter builds on a broader shift: India’s revenue per download has more than doubled over the past three and a half years, even as quarterly downloads have held around 6.3 billion since 2023. Sensor Tower insights analyst Eve Chen attributed the change to wider adoption of digital payments — including India’s Unified Payments Interface, which lets people pay directly from their bank accounts, and digital wallets — alongside growing acceptance of app-based subscriptions.

The trend stands out globally. India’s app revenue posted the fastest growth in the quarter among major app markets, generating more than $200 million in quarterly consumer spending, per Sensor Tower’s data. Mexico grew 30% and Turkey 25% over the same period, while U.S. app revenue actually declined 3%. India still trails more mature markets by a wide margin — revenue per download runs about $4.60 in the U.S., $3.90 in South Korea, and $6.10 in Japan, versus a small fraction of that in India. “These figures suggest that India is no longer just the world’s largest market by downloads, but is also emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for app monetization,” Chen said.

Generative AI is one of the fastest-growing segments: OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude together accounted for nearly 83% of India’s AI app revenue in the quarter. Non-gaming categories made up 68% of India’s mobile app revenue in the first half of this year, up from 58% three years earlier, with Google One becoming India’s highest-grossing app during the quarter and streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime Video and JioHotstar also gaining ground. Gaming bucked the broader trend too, with revenue rising 3.7% from the previous quarter even as global gaming spending declined. App-intelligence firm Appfigures says India’s subscription market keeps growing, though the pace has slowed since the AI-fueled surge of the past two years; it estimates ChatGPT alone generates about $60,000 a day in India — down from roughly $80,000 a day last October — after attracting around 1.8 million downloads in the country over the past month.

Why it matters

India’s shift from a download-heavy, low-monetization market toward paid AI and subscription apps signals a maturing revenue base for global platforms betting on the country’s scale — even as per-download revenue there still lags far behind the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.