Between January and August 2025, revenues from generative AI applications on the App Store almost tripled, primarily fueled by ChatGPT subscriptions. Here are the specifics.
### GenAI apps purportedly contributed nearly $900M in App Store fees in 2025
A recent report from AppMagic (via WSJ) indicates that “Apple’s income from GenAI applications increased from around $35 million in January 2025 to a peak of $101 million in August,” before declining again due to a drop in ChatGPT downloads.
Discussing ChatGPT, AppMagic reveals that OpenAI’s chatbot represented nearly 75% of the total commission increases from generative applications on the App Store, with Grok coming in second at 5%.
As highlighted by the WSJ, this is a significant amount for a company that still does not have a genuine competitor to ChatGPT and akin products, and it serves as a beneficial cushion while Apple navigates its partnership with Google to integrate Gemini as the foundational technology for the updated Siri:
> Its Siri chatbot remains underwhelming by contemporary AI criteria. What Apple possesses that other AI entities lack is a leading status in device manufacturing. Regardless of how sophisticated OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI develop their chatbots, iPhones continue to be a main conduit for reaching consumers.
Apple’s AI strategy contradicts the approaches of rivals who are investing hundreds of billions in chips and data centers to create state-of-the-art large language models. Apple is allocating a small fraction of that budget, instead concentrating on utilizing the personal data users save on their iPhones, along with custom-designed chips, to support an on-device AI approach.
Neither Apple nor Google has revealed the financial details of their collaboration, but Bloomberg reported last year that it is projected to be “approximately $1 billion annually.”
Ironically, it seems this cost may be indirectly financed by Google’s own rivalry on the App Store.
To read the WSJ’s report on AppMagic’s findings, follow this link.
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