This was first published November 25th, in our weekly newsletter Apptopia Insight. To receive insights like this weekly, sign up here.
- ChatGPT ceded the #1 spot to Gemini today in the App Store
- YouTube data looks better than consensus expects
- Do not underestimate the improvements at Grok
App rankings are more complicated than one might think. They get updated multiple times throughout the day, and – when trying to combine them into one daily rank value, like we do here at Apptopia – there is no obvious way to know if the rank at one time of day should be considered more important than another time of day. Apptopia’s daily rankings have a time-tested, proprietary formula, but no matter how you look at it, today was a big day:
Gemini is #1! ChatGPT has been the #1 app in the US App Store for 22 of the 24 days in November, but Gemini was finally able to unseat the king of AI. For those of you who are curious, the top apps those other two days were the New York Road Runners app on the day of the NYC marathon and the BigFuture Schools app on the day October SAT scores came out.
However, this is not actually the first time Gemini managed to unseat ChatGPT as the number one app this year. See the chart below – the first time was back in September after the launch of Nano Banana. Gemini spent 20 days at #1 when that was all the rage. So even if people as esteemed as Marc Benioff are agog over the capabilities of Gemini 3.0, it still has 19 more days to go to no longer be second banana. The people want to make themselves figurines!
Meanwhile, the good news for GOOG keeps on coming. Our data is showing that YouTube is tracking better than what the market expects. Currently, consensus shows a deceleration in YouTube Ads Revenue growth in 4Q25. However, we are seeing relatively flat sequential growth in Downloads and DAUs, and healthy growth in time spent per DAU. These combine for a better than expected trend for YouTube so far this quarter:
Grok is not to be ignored
While Gemini is getting all the attention right now, keep an eye on Grok. Since October 1, it has outgrown every AI app except Gemini. As we have noted elsewhere, ChatGPT’s DAUs are actually flat-to-down in that same timeframe. Meanwhile, Grok is just below its all-time high in DAUs, set back in April:
If you want to dig into the trends behind Grok’s growth, or any other topic related to AI apps, please feel free to reach out!
