Five Predictions for Consumer Apps in 2025

Written by Vin Sathyamoorthy , former Zynga product manager and a Reddit product director. Current proud Texan, and a member of the Deconstructor of Fun consulting team.   Consumer Apps had a banner year in 2024, driving in-app monetization to record highs and beating Games in terms of worldwide revenue share.

  As game revenues stagnated, app revenues continued to rise. g. Disney+, Max, Reel Shorts; (b) AI subscription products; (c) Creator products on TikTok / Instagram / Others.

(Source: Sensor Tower) Societal inflection points are important catalysts for change as well: in the US, there is a growing anxiety about a dimming “American Dream” with high inflation and a housing gap affecting Gen Z / Millennials disproportionately.   These inflections will shape 2025 in expected and unexpected ways. Let’s dive into our 2025 Predictions for Consumer Apps!

Prediction #1: The Social Media Crackdown Won’t Kill TikTok. In the US, TikTok has until April 25, 2025 for the Trump Administration to “determine the best course forward” with the popular app.   I believe (1) is highly unlikely, because there were a number of high-profile buyers lined up prior to the Biden Administration deadline, and ByteDance refused to sell.

Number (3) seems unpalatable to the Trump Administration and certainly to the 170M US TikTok users and the buyer / seller economy built on it. With the hardline stances taken geopolitically, I think Option (2), a joint venture, is the path forward for TikTok. TikTok revenues hit $10B in 2024 for IAP Spend - pictured above (Coins / Gifting).

TikTok Shop produced an additional $10B GMV in 2024 as the live-shopping business grew exponentially.   A joint venture, where a sanitized TikTok survives ( with a completely US-based technical infrastructure and without its precious algorithm) is what I expect to happen. g.

YouTube, Twitter/X, Snap) time to create compelling TikTok substitutes. Prediction #2: “Gamification” + AI Experiences Will Drive New Breakout Products in Finance, Education, and Health & Wellness Experiences. g.

  The “Companion AI” market is one of the first major Consumer AI use cases to get broad adoption. Character AI and Talkie AI had a combined ~40M downloads in 2024. 5 hours / day, a huge engagement number.

(Source: Sensor Tower) The product experiences won’t be limited to an “app screen” and can be multi-modal, allowing you to use voice, image, text, and other inputs like wearables to interact with apps. With these trends in place, I think we will see the following in 2025:  New 1M+ user applications across Finance, Education, and Health & Wellness. We probably won’t have a 100M+ user phenomenon like ChatGPT, but we’ll have category-redefining apps in these self-improvement/growth areas.