Article: The Accelerating Rise of Gemini in the AI Chatbot Market
📈 Gemini’s Surge in Users and Engagement
New figures from Sensor Tower show that Gemini’s global monthly active user base increased by 30% between August and November 2025.
- In contrast, ChatGPT’s growth over the same period was only around 6%, bringing it to approximately 810 million MAUs.
- Gemini’s daily in-app usage has also jumped: users are now spending nearly 11 minutes per day, a 120% increase from March — more than double the usage gain seen in ChatGPT during the same timeframe
This rapid adoption appears to be partly driven by features like Gemini’s image-generation model (nicknamed “Nano Banana”), which has helped attract users seeking creative tools alongside conversational AI capabilities.
🌍 Market Share Dynamics: The Changing AI Landscape
While ChatGPT continues to hold the largest share among global AI-chatbot downloads and active users, at roughly 50% of downloads and 55% of MAUs worldwide, its lead is eroding.
According to Sensor Tower:
- The collective share of alternative AI-assistant platforms (such as Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok and others) is rising. Between May and November 2025, Gemini alone increased its global-MAU share by about 3 percentage points.
- Over the same period, ChatGPT lost roughly 3 percentage points of its global-MAU share.
Other chatbots also saw sharp growth: Perplexity logged about 370% year-on-year growth, and Claude about 190% — underscoring how the broader AI-assistant ecosystem is expanding, and that users are increasingly exploring beyond ChatGPT.
🔄 What This Means for OpenAI’s Strategy
Faced with declining relative growth metrics and intensifying competition, OpenAI seems to be recalibrating. According to media reports, the company has postponed planned ad efforts in favour of focusing on building a new, more powerful AI model, internally dubbed ‘Garlic’ — expected to excel at complex tasks such as coding, reasoning, and perhaps image generation.
At the same time, Gemini’s edge is being amplified by the fact that it’s embedded deeply in Google’s ecosystem. Because Gemini is integrated across Google Search, Android, and other Google services, it benefits from an existing distribution infrastructure — giving it a structural advantage when it comes to reaching smartphone-heavy markets such as India.
Analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak from Pivotal Research Group summed it up: Google appears best positioned to monetise its AI investments, thanks to its “best-in-class Gemini AI” and its ability to reduce search-related costs at scale.
🧭 The Bigger Picture: AI Chatbots Moving Mainstream
The rapid rise of Gemini suggests that AI chatbots are no longer niche tech novelties — they’re becoming mainstream utility tools.
- In markets such as India, where Android dominates the smartphone ecosystem, integration with default Google services gives Gemini a natural boost.
- Users seem hungry not just for text chat, but for multi-modal AI: generative images, creative tools, and broader assistant-style features. Gemini’s “Nano Banana” image model appears to have tapped exactly that demand.
- The rising popularity of alternatives like Perplexity, Claude, and Grok alongside Gemini points to a diversifying AI ecosystem: users are no longer forced to pick a single platform — many seem to be experimenting with multiple assistants based on need.
🔎 What to Watch Next
- Model innovation – Will OpenAI's ‘Garlic’ (or subsequent models) reclaim growth by offering stronger reasoning, coding and image-generation capabilities?
- Ecosystem integration – As AI assistants integrate deeper into operating systems and default apps (especially Android), user convenience could become a major competitive edge.
- Diversification of AI tools – With several high-growth alternatives in the market, users may increasingly pick and choose AI assistants depending on tasks — from creative work to research to productivity.
- Global adoption patterns – In regions where smartphones (especially Android) are dominant — like India — integration and ease of access will likely influence which AI tools become mainstream.
Source:indianexpressGPT
