Symbol style releases are riding enlargement for AI cell apps, producing 6.5x extra downloads than conventional style updates, in step with a brand new file from app intelligence supplier Appfigures.
This marks a shift from previous days, when the discharge of recent fashions powering the conversational reviews drove extra call for, along the brand new options like a voice chat interface.
As an example, ChatGPT and Gemini each and every added tens of tens of millions of recent downloads after liberating their respective picture fashions, Appfigures discovered.
For Google’s Gemini, the discharge of its picture style Nano Banana drove an extra 22+ million downloads within the 28 days following the advent of the Gemini 2.5 Flash picture style closing August. This release lifted the app’s downloads via greater than 4x over that duration, the knowledge confirmed.
In the meantime, ChatGPT added greater than 12 million incremental installs within the 28 days after the advent of its GPT-4o picture style in March of closing yr. That’s kind of 4.5x extra downloads than it noticed for its GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and GPT-5 style releases, Appfigures identified.
Different style releases adopted equivalent developments, regardless that on a smaller scale. Meta AI’s advent of its AI video feed Vibes added an estimated 2.6 million incremental downloads within the 28 days after its September 2025 unencumber. (Sure, technically, this can be a video style, but it surely’s in the long run about visible content material, no longer simply textual content.)
Nonetheless, the file cautioned, further downloads don’t all the time translate into higher cell earnings.
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As an alternative, new picture style releases give other folks a reason why to put in the app and check out out its progressed image-generation features. That doesn’t imply they’ll essentially convert to paying subscribers. As an example, Appfigures famous that Nano Banana drove simplest $181,000 in estimated gross client spending all through the 28-day window following its unencumber, despite the fact that it produced a bigger spike in downloads than ChatGPT’s 4o picture style unencumber.
Meta AI’s release of Vibes additionally resulted in further downloads, however no significant earnings.
A number of the 3, simplest ChatGPT became the higher consideration into precise bucks.
OpenAI’s 4o image-generation style resulted in an estimated $70 million in gross client spending over the 28 days after its release, in comparison with its prior baseline, Appfigures stated.
The corporate additionally checked out DeepSeek in its research, but it surely didn’t have compatibility the development.
Whilst DeepSeek R1 drove 28 million downloads after its January 2025 unencumber, it wasn’t a regular style comparability match. This used to be DeepSeek’s breakout second, when it went from being somewhat unknown to an in a single day sensation because the tech trade realized concerning the tactics it used to coach its AI fashions at a fragment of the price of its competition. This example highlights how interest can force downloads — regardless that on this example, the hobby wasn’t tied to a picture style.
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