We download fewer and fewer apps, but they make us spend more and more

We live in an era in which the smartphone has become an natural extension of our hand and of our mind. We rely on applications for almost every aspect of our daily life, from work to entertainment, up to managing the most mundane tasks.

However, despite this seemingly indissoluble technological dependency, our behavior as consumers is changing radically.

According to the most recent data, in fact, the enthusiasm for discovery and downloading new software is waning, making room for a much more burdensome economic dynamic for the end user: we download less, but we pay a lot more.

Smartphone Apps: The Constant Decline in Downloads and the Rise in Spending

The latest annual report on the app economy, written by Appfigures, paints a very clear picture for 2025. For the fifth consecutive year, the total number of downloads has registered a decline. Compared to the previous year, installations on the App Store and Google Play Store combined fell by 2.7%, stopping at an estimated 106.9 billion globally.

We are far from the dizzying peaks recorded during the pandemic boom of 2020, when the entire world, confined at home, had pushed installations up to the record figure of 135 billion. Since then, the curve has been steadily downward.

This trend suggests that the market has reached a phase of maturity or perhaps saturation: users already own the digital tools they need and are increasingly reluctant to try novelties they do not deem essential.

A Record-Breaking Revenue

On one hand, interest in new installations has fallen; on the other hand, the flow of money generated by the mobile ecosystem is higher than ever. In the same period in which downloads fell, consumer spending surged, growing by 21.6% and reaching the historic figure of $155.8 billion.

This paradox is explained by a fundamental strategic shift by developers and publishers. Faced with the difficulty of acquiring new users in a crowded market, companies have perfected the art of monetizing the existing user base.

The business model has moved aggressively toward in-app purchases and, above all, toward recurring subscriptions. It is no longer necessary to convince millions of people to download a free app; it is much more profitable to persuade current users to pay a monthly fee to unlock features, remove ads, or access premium content.

Video Games and Utilities: Two Different Speeds

Looking at the data more deeply, it emerges that not all categories have suffered the same fate. The mobile videogames sector is the one that has suffered the most decline in interest, with a decrease in downloads of 8.6% compared to the previous year, dropping to 39.4 billion installations.

Conversely, non-gaming applications showed surprising resilience, registering even a slight growth of 1.1%.

Also on the spending front the dynamics diverge, though both remain positive. Although games still account for almost half of total spending (about 46%), generating 72.2 billion dollars with a 10% increase, it is the services and utilities apps that drive the real economic growth.

Spending in this segment exploded by 33.9%, reaching 82.6 billion dollars. This data confirms how users are increasingly willing to pay for services that offer productivity, streaming, storage or well-being, rather than mere entertainment.

The Era of Subscription Fatigue

The financial success of the subscription model, which guarantees companies recurring and predictable revenue, could however be a double-edged sword. The report suggests that the drop in downloads could be closely linked to the so-called “subscription fatigue”, i.e., subscription fatigue.

Users today are bombarded with monthly payment requests for any service, from music to video streaming, up to cloud storage and fitness apps.

This fragmentation of costs makes people much more selective: before downloading a new application, the average user carefully weighs whether it’s worth risking encountering yet another paywall.

Subscription saturation is therefore creating a barrier to entry for new apps, forever changing the way we interact with our devices: less curiosity, more economic calculation.