Consumer demand for the latest AI technology is growing. The release of OpenAI’s latest flagship model, GPT-4o, has now led to the company’s biggest increase in mobile revenue, despite the model being freely available online. Launched last Monday, the GPT-4o can handle text, speech and video and offers real-time feedback and a range of emotional voice options, making it a much more powerful model than what was offered before. That technical innovation is also prompting more users to upgrade to OpenAI’s paid subscription, according to new data from the app intelligence firm Appfigures.
Although OpenAI said that GPT-4o would be offered to users in its free tier, that promise was not extended to include users of the ChatGPT mobile app. Instead, mobile users are encouraged to upgrade to their $19.99 monthly subscription, ChatGPT Plus, if they want to experiment with OpenAI’s latest release.
This strategic decision is creating increased demand for subscriptions among mobile users and has now led to the largest revenue growth OpenAI has ever seen on mobile devices.
Appfigures notes that the net revenue of the ChatGPT mobile app initially increased by 22% on the day of GPT-4o’s release and continued to increase in the following days. On Tuesday, net revenue reached $900,000 — nearly double the app’s daily average of $491,000. (The amount of net revenue is calculated after Apple and Google receive their commission.)
Last week, from Monday to Friday, the ChatGPT mobile app earned $4.2 million in net revenue on both the App Store and Google Play, the company were found, representing the biggest revenue increase the app has seen to date. The jump in revenue shows there’s real consumer demand for trying out the latest experiments in artificial intelligence, particularly on mobile, even if it’s more expensive than a Netflix subscription.
What’s more, the trend doesn’t yet appear to be slowing down, and in fact may be maintaining or even increasing, the data show. Stay tuned.
