Jordan Bevan
Similarweb’s recent report “The App Explosion After AI” revealed a lot about where the market stands right now. Monthly app launches are approaching 120k, driven largely by AI development tools. But 75% of apps released since February 2025 have failed to break 1,000 downloads. More apps are being built than ever, yet breaking through remains just as hard as it’s always been, maybe harder.
We spoke with Andrea Girardello, VP of App Intelligence at Similarweb, about what’s driving these trends, where app teams are struggling most, and where the market is heading.
Similarweb’s research shows that 75% of apps launched since February 2025 have failed to break 1,000 downloads, despite a big increase in new releases driven by AI. Does that surprise you?
Not really, though the scale of it is hard to ignore once you see it laid out in the data. What AI has done is dramatically decrease the difficulty of creating an app. Now anyone with a good idea and access to the right tools can build one.
But people won’t download more apps just because there are more apps out there. If anything, they’re getting more selective. So you end up with a widening gap between supply and actual, meaningful traction, and that traction stays incredibly concentrated among a small number of breakout apps. That’s the way it’s been for a while. AI is intensifying that dynamic, not changing it.
The report also shows that even these high-growth apps are struggling with retention. You look at Grok and ChatGPT and the retention gap is enormous despite Grok’s massive growth. Do you think retention is the defining challenge right now?
It’s one of the most important, and most underrated, yes. The Grok versus ChatGPT comparison is a clear illustration of something we see across the board: virality doesn’t always equal long-term value. Grok’s growth looks extraordinary at first glance, but when you look at who’s actually coming back 30 days later, only a fraction of those users are sticking around compared to ChatGPT, which has up to a 3x stronger retention rate.
Downloads are exciting, but user retention is what actually builds a business. Right now, a lot of teams are still optimizing for the metric that looks good rather than the one that leads to long-term success. The best teams we work with focus on day 7 and day 30 retention, not just how many downloads they’re getting.
Beyond the report findings, what are the broader trends you’re watching most closely in the app market right now?
A few things. Category saturation is a big one. We’re seeing massive new app releases across categories like Productivity, Games, Sports, Health & Fitness, and Lifestyle. These are the categories where AI-assisted development is easiest, so they’re attracting the most new releases. For any app already in those categories, the competitive environment looks totally different than it did just 18 months ago.
The other thing I’m watching closely is how users are discovering apps. AI-powered discovery is becoming a real referral channel. We found as many as 8.9 million AI referrals to app stores in April 2026 alone, and this channel has been accelerating fast in recent months. But that traffic is concentrated among established brands and highly-rated apps, so AI discovery isn’t leveling the playing field for smaller or newer apps the way many expected. Instead, it’s reinforcing the advantages that already-dominant apps had.
What does a typical pain point look like for the app teams you work with? What are they coming to Similarweb to solve?
The most common one is competitive blind spots. Teams know their own metrics well, but have very limited visibility into what’s happening with the competition. Is a rival growing in a market you haven’t prioritized? Are they gaining share in a specific demographic? Is their revenue trending up or quietly declining? Without that external view, you’re making strategic decisions blindly.
The second is benchmarking, understanding what “good” actually looks like in your category, especially as AI reshapes it. Your retention rate might feel strong internally, but how does it compare to category leaders? Your download growth might look healthy until you realize the whole category grew twice as fast. Context is everything, and most teams are missing it.
Marketing budgets have been under pressure for a while now. How does that change the way teams should be thinking about app data and intelligence?
It actually makes it more important, not less. When budgets are tight, the cost of a bad decision goes up. You can’t afford to invest in a new market and find out six months later that a competitor already won it, or run a campaign targeting the wrong audience because you were working from assumptions rather than actual data.
What we see from the best-performing teams is that they use periods of budget constraint to sharpen their intelligence, making sure every dollar they do spend is going somewhere they’re confident about. That’s a very different mindset from treating data as a nice-to-have that gets cut when things get tight.
For someone who feels like the app market is moving too fast to keep up, what’s your honest advice?
You can’t keep up with everything, and the goal isn’t to monitor every app in your category. It’s to build a clear picture of the things that actually matter to your specific business: who your real competitors are, where user attention is going, and what’s driving retention versus churn in your space.
The teams that thrive in fast-moving markets aren’t the ones with the most data. They’re the ones who’ve figured out which bits of data to actually pay attention to, and built that into their regular workflow. That process matters more than most people realize.
So, where do you think the app market is actually headed?
The mobile app world is thriving. AI is proving how central apps remain to how people live and work, and it’s pulling in more builders, more investment, and more attention than ever before. What’s mainly changing is the competition. For years, the question was “can you build it?” Now it’s “can you earn attention, build a habit, and then hold it?” That’s a much harder problem, and it requires a different kind of sophistication.
The app market is becoming more mature, more complex, and more interesting. The teams that lead it over the next few years will be the ones that understand that complexity.
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Andrea Girardello, VP App Intelligence, Similarweb
Similarweb powers businesses to win their markets with Digital Data. By providing essential web, app, and retail data, we empower our users to discover business opportunities, identify competitive threats, optimize strategy, acquire the right customers, and increase monetization. Similarweb products are integrated into users’ workflow, powered by advanced technology, and based on leading comprehensive Digital Data.
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