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.

  A breakout Personal Finance app built for the middle-class. The Personal Finance use case is very compelling in a rough economic environment - imagine an app that can draw inputs from your spending, credit history and financial goals to optimize your Credit Score and your Savings.   Top AI Apps across multiple use cases like Dating, Writing and Music (Source: Sensor Tower, Aug 2024) Prediction #3: Craving for Authentic + Community Experiences Will Drive New Product Experiences.

As noted in Prediction #2, people are going to flock to AI solutions because they will offer a lot of benefits. This same explosion of synthetic AI data is going to drive people to seek out authentic, human experiences.   Reddit MAU 2018 - 2026, Actuals + Forecast.

(Source: Statista ) I think a few things will happen in this space:  All major consumer apps will have a community play. YouTube recently beefed up their “Communities” product offering , to ensure authentic conversation between creators (like Graham Stephen, Marques Brownlee) and fans.   Airbnb will release an upgraded “Experiences” product, others will follow suit.

People are craving in-person, immersive experiences - shared with other people. g. stay at Barbie’s dream house or float in the clouds inside the Disney “Up” house) with sustainable margins.

Airbnb is targeting “Disneyland experiences on a local budget” - they want to capture the “going out to the movies on the weekend” use case that used to be common.    Live Shopping will have a banner year: TikTok Shop, Amazon Live and Whatnot will lead live shopping growth outside of China, and the global GMV of live shopping will surpass $1T in the next 1-2 years.    “Social Commerce” is forecasted to see the most growth in China, but it will still be a multi-billion dollar business in the rest of the world.

(Source: Statista + Stocklytics) Prediction #4: YouTube will be THE dominant cultural force - its gravitational pull will be felt in all consumer apps. 2025 will be the year that traditional TV is pronounced dead, and YouTube will be crowned its usurper. Ironically, YouTube will have accomplished this without producing any content of its own.

  YouTube has more than 2x the watch hours of Netflix and TikTok combined. (Source: Sensor Tower) YouTube is showing they can move fast and accommodate new formats. Livestreaming, Shorts, Creator Paid Products - they have them all.

YouTube has music licensing with all major labels, streaming deals with sports leagues and they’ve started offering AI Creator Tools too.   Amazon, Apple and FAST Channels / Platforms will all have their place in the video consumption universe, but YouTube is the most complete and vast offering on the internet.   YouTube will take on new forms of “traditional media” in its flagship app.

YouTube has already added blockbuster movies like Interstellar , Jurassic World and Jason Bourne as free offerings in their app.   YouTube will give Podcasting a dedicated presence in the app. Spotify and YouTube are competing intensely for the Podcasting use case - the format is creating new hit products regularly (Kylie Kelce’s new show beating Joe Rogan in Dec-24, $100M deals for Alex Cooper, the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” show and Will Arnett’s “Smartless”) and has great unit economics.

  YouTube Shopping will get major upgrades in 2025. With a $10B+ business waiting in the wings, YouTube will pursue this aggressively to sell Creator merchandising, recommended products and more. YouTube’s existing Shopify partnerships will get deeper so it’s that much easier for users to find recommendations and impulse buy.

  Elon Musk is driving X to be a complete digital ecosystem , with communications, payments, commerce and more sitting on the platform. com is trying to build a super app for saving , by combining savings on travel, ability to earn cash back on purchases, etc. com) can succeed without being at the expense of the other.

  Some popular “Super Apps” in the Asian markets; WeChat’s ubiquity in China has been a model of pursuit for many US-based tech companies for the last ~5 years. Conclusions As noted at the top, technology and societal inflection points will play a huge role in how Consumer Apps shape up in 2025 - I think the two major themes will be AI’s rapid maturation and authentic human connection.   This duality - between AI-powered convenience and authentic engagement - will define the next wave of successful consumer applications, with platforms like YouTube and emerging super apps serving as the connective tissue between digital utility and cultural relevance.