India is starting to pay for apps, not just download them

For a long time India was the app world's paradox: everyone downloaded, almost nobody paid. That's shifting fast. New numbers from Sensor Tower show Indian consumers spent a record $345 million on mobile apps in the second quarter of this year, a 35% jump from the same period last year. And this time gaming isn't the star of the show — generative AI, streaming, and productivity apps are doing the heavy lifting.

The shift has been building for a while. Downloads in India have held steady around 6.3 billion a quarter since 2023, but revenue per download has more than doubled over three-and-a-half years. Eve Chen, an insights analyst at Sensor Tower, credits the change to wider digital payment adoption — India's Unified Payments Interface and digital wallets in particular — which has made in-app purchases far less annoying, plus a growing comfort with paying for subscriptions in the first place.

Compared to other big markets, India's growth rate stands out even if the raw numbers don't yet. Its app revenue grew faster than any major market in Q2, crossing $200 million in quarterly consumer spending. Mexico grew 30%, Turkey 25%, and U.S. app revenue actually fell 3% over the same stretch. But India still lags in absolute terms — revenue per download sits at a small fraction of the roughly $4.60 seen in the U.S., $3.90 in South Korea, or $6.10 in Japan. Chen argues the direction matters more than the current level, since it points to a lot of runway left.

AI is where the momentum is most obvious. ChatGPT and Claude together made up nearly 83% of India's AI app revenue in Q2. Non-gaming apps overall now account for 68% of India's mobile app revenue in the first half of 2026, up from 58% three years earlier. Google One became India's top-grossing app during the quarter, and streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Sony LIV, and JioHotstar all saw spending climb. Gaming, oddly, went against the global grain too, growing 3.7% quarter over quarter even as it declined worldwide.

Not everyone reads the AI boom the same way. Appfigures founder and CEO Ariel Michaeli says India's subscription growth is real but has cooled since the initial AI-driven surge two years back. His firm estimates ChatGPT now brings in about $60,000 a day in India, down from around $80,000 a day last October, even as it still pulled in roughly 1.8 million downloads in the past month. Staggering numbers, as Michaeli put it — just not accelerating quite as fast as before.