More than three years after its launch, OpenAI’s ChatGPT continues to dominate the global AI assistant market, although its share has slipped below 50 per cent for the first time according to analytics firm Sensor Tower’s State of AI Report 2026, cited in a report by TechCrunch.

The report found that ChatGPT remains the world’s most-used AI assistant, competition in the segment is intensifying as users increasingly turn to alternatives such as Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and xAI’s Grok.

Sensor Tower said ChatGPT’s market share stood at 46.4 per cent by the end of May, down from above 50 per cent until January. 

At the same time, Gemini expanded its share to 27.7 per cent while Claude reached 10.3 per cent. Other AI assistants, including Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and Meta AI, accounted for less than 5 per cent of the market individually.

Even so, ChatGPT remains the largest AI assistant globally with over 1.1 billion monthly users, according to the report. Gemini follows with 662 million monthly users, while Claude has around 245 million. Earlier this year, Sensor Tower reported that ChatGPT became the fastest application to cross one billion monthly users.

As highlighted by TechCrunch, the report also pointed to changing user behaviour, noting that users are increasingly switching between AI assistants depending on features, integrations and trust factors. 

It cited OpenAI’s reported partnership with the US Department of Defence in February as an event that coincided with a rise in uninstall activity, suggesting that company decisions and brand perception may influence user retention.

The broader AI app market, however, continues to expand. Sensor Tower estimates AI applications could record nearly 2.3 billion downloads and over $4.2 billion in consumer spending during the first half of 2026. 

This compares with $1.83 billion during the same period last year, indicating growing monetisation in the sector, although download and spending growth rates have begun to slow.

Regionally, Asia saw a 3.3 per cent decline in downloads during the first quarter of 2026, driven by reduced activity in China and India. However, the region still leads globally in overall downloads, even as North America and Europe generate higher in-app spending.

The time spent on AI apps is projected to increase from 17.2 billion hours in H1 of 2025 to nearly 36 billion hours in H1 2026, with ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude accounting for a majority of usage.

Sensor Tower said OpenAI has gradually expanded advertisements within ChatGPT after beginning limited experiments earlier this year. 

By May, around 17 per cent of daily users were estimated to have seen ads, with software, shopping, media, entertainment, and food among key advertiser categories.

At the same time, ChatGPT is increasingly directing referral traffic to retailers such as Target, Walmart and Costco through shopping integrations, according to the report. 

Sensory Tower noted that Amazon, which has reportedly restricted ChatGPT web crawlers, has seen relatively flat referral traffic from the platform.

Source: The Indian Express 

--Agencies