3 days ago
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ChatGPT continues to soar.
According to an X post data aggregation company Similarweb, the ChatGPT app for iOS was downloaded around 29.6 million times over the past 28 days; over the same time period, App Store downloads of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X reached a combined total of about 32.9 million -- a difference of around 10.6%.
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However, as critics in the X thread pointed out, the social apps in question have had much more lead time to gain adoption. Still, ChatGPT was the most downloaded app in the world in April, according to app analytics site Appfigures, surpassing both Instagram and TikTok.
The last 12 months of download data for ChatGPT and leading social apps.
According to recent court filings reported by The Information, ChatGPT had around 600 million monthly active users in March, compared to around 350 million for Google's Gemini. Similarweb also reported in April that Gemini downloads had surpassed those of ChatGPT for Android devices, indicating ChatGPT still hasn't cracked Google's presence within its own community.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
A report from Pew Research Center published Wednesday found that the number of US adults who have used ChatGPT at least once (about 34%) has doubled since 2023. The report also found, however, that the majority of US adults (66%) have never used the chatbot, and many (20%) have never even heard of it.
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Released to the public in Nov. 2022, ChatGPT quickly became a viral sensation, reaching its first million users in just five days. Its success sparked a race among leading tech companies like Google and Meta to invest in their own generative AI technology, an industry-wide trend which in turn made Nvidia -- the US chip manufacturer that dominates the market for GPUs, the technological cornerstone of generative AI -- the wealthiest company in the world.
ChatGPT has evolved and grown significantly since its public debut: it's been equipped with parent company OpenAI's image-generating technology, given the power of speech via Advanced Voice Mode, and integrated with Apple's Siri AI assistant. All of this adds up to a broad strategic initiative within OpenAI to make its core chatbot the average consumer's go-to, general-purpose AI assistant -- especially as the company moves into hardware and even potentially workspace productivity tools.
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Given the last numbers of app downloads reported by Similarweb (which doesn't account for all the users who are exclusively using it via desktop), the company seems to be making good progress towards that goal.
Also: 5 reasons I turn to ChatGPT every day - from faster research to replacing Siri
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