ChatGPT showed steep growth with user numbers increasing 341% in December last year compared to January
ChatGPT recorded the overwhelmingly highest number of new installations in Korea’s mobile application market last year.
According to the ‘Republic of Korea Mobile App Rankings’ released by IGAWorks Mobile Index on Jan. 8, ChatGPT’s cumulative new installations last year totaled 16.57 million, the highest among all apps. This analysis calculated average MAU based on integrated Android and iOS data from January to December 2025.
While the top-tier structure centered around ‘national apps’ such as YouTube, KakaoTalk, Naver, and Google remained solid, ChatGPT, a generative AI app, showed steep growth with user numbers increasing 341% in December compared to January, ranking 27th in the top 100 users. The number of active devices also reached 19.49 million, indicating that the domestic usage base is rapidly expanding.
Following ChatGPT, Digital Onnuri ranked second with 12.81 million installations, and Temu ranked third with 11.52 million installations. Naver Plus Store also recorded 10.2 million new installations, placing fourth. This was followed by Naver Plus Store (10.2 million), Instagram (9.79 million). TikTok Lite (8.03 million), Coupang Eats (6.93 million), Baedal Minjok (6.83 million), CGV (6.73 million), and Government24 (6.24 million) were also included in the top rankings, while Ttaenggyeoyo ranked 13th with 5.7 million installations.
In terms of total mobile app user numbers, YouTube overtook KakaoTalk to claim first place.
Based on average Monthly Active Users (MAU) from January to December last year, YouTube ranked first with 48.13 million users, followed by KakaoTalk with 46.35 million users.
Naver (44.94 million) and Google (41.28 million) ranked third and fourth respectively, analyzed as still forming a duopoly in the productivity app sector.
The analysis of top 2 by industry also showed distinct ‘scale differences’ between top apps. In the entertainment sector, the gap between YouTube (48.13 million) and Netflix (14.44 million) reached 33.69 million users. In the social network field, KakaoTalk (46.35 million) showed nearly a two-fold difference over Instagram (24.11 million).
In the shopping sector, Coupang led with 33.71 million users, creating a gap with second-place Danggeun (19.15 million), while in travel and transportation, Naver Map (27.81 million) surpassed T Map (14.82 million). In food and beverage, finance, and fashion and clothing sectors, Baedal Minjok, Toss, and Musinsa recorded first place respectively.
The productivity sector formed a close duopoly with Naver (44.94 million) and Google (41.28 million), while the finance sector also maintained top rankings with Toss (20.02 million) and Samsung Wallet (17.73 million) showing a narrow difference.
Competition was particularly fierce in the fashion and clothing sector. The average MAU gap between Musinsa (5.82 million) and Ably (5.6 million) was 220 thousand users, representing the narrowest gap between top rankings among the major sectors presented in the report.
While the dominance of YouTube, KakaoTalk, Naver, and Google remained, the analysis indicates that generative AI is rapidly becoming mainstream, creating an inflection point in usage patterns and the app market.
