More than one in three South Koreans now opens ChatGPT on their phone each month. New figures released on Sunday put the app at 18.76 million monthly users in October, the first time it has passed 18 million, with total time spent on the app more than doubling in a year. Anthropic’s Claude is the fastest riser, growing about fifteenfold to 2.1 million users and second place, while local rival A-dot and Perplexity both lost ground.
The numbers behind the milestone
The figures come from Mobile Index, the app-analytics service run by Korean tech firm IGAWorks, which released the October data on Sunday. ChatGPT drew 18,762,276 monthly active users, up 43.8 percent from 13,048,025 a year earlier and up 4.3 percent from 17.99 million in September. It is the first time the app has passed 18 million since tracking began.
People are not just opening the app; they are staying longer. Total time spent on ChatGPT reached about 50.98 million hours in October, up 113.9 percent from 23.83 million a year earlier. Average use rose to 163 minutes per user, up from 110, and ChatGPT now accounts for 91 percent of the AI-app users Mobile Index tracks.
The figures cover only phone apps on Android and iOS, not web use, and they come with one blind spot. Google’s Gemini can also be reached through the main Google app, so the data may understate its real audience. Even so, with South Korea’s population at about 51.8 million, ChatGPT now reaches more than a third of the country.
Claude’s fifteenfold climb
Claude is the month’s fastest riser. The Anthropic app reached about 2.1 million monthly users in October, roughly fifteen times the 139,131 recorded a year earlier, climbing from seventh to second place among the AI apps tracked. Total time spent on Claude rose more than twenty-twofold to about 3.88 million hours, as average use rose to 111 minutes from 75.
A second survey points the same way. WiseApp and Retail, tracking business AI apps in September, put ChatGPT at 24.7 million users, ahead of A-dot at 11.47 million and Gemini at 9.87 million, with Claude fourth at 4.04 million. Claude’s count there rose 853.1 percent in a year, the fastest growth of any business AI app above a million users.
The losers in the same data are smaller rivals. A-dot fell to about 1.07 million monthly users, down 42.5 percent in a year, and Perplexity dropped to about 570,000, down 30.9 percent. New installs tell a similar story: ChatGPT still led with about 790,000, though down 16.2 percent, while Claude drew about 490,000, roughly thirteen times its year-earlier figure.
Our Read
Korea is a preview of where the chatbot race is heading, because it is mobile-first and connected. ChatGPT’s 91 percent share of tracked AI-app users shows a market tipping toward a default, and growth comes from depth, not breadth: installs fell while minutes per user rose by nearly half. That is the shape of a daily habit, not a novelty.
Claude’s surge is the more interesting number. A fifteenfold jump from a small base is easy to dismiss, but second place in a market this concentrated is not. It fits a pattern of Claude winning work use — coding, analysis, and since last week personal finance inside the app — while ChatGPT wins the market. The two play different games.
One caution before declaring a winner: the data flatters ChatGPT. Gemini’s real audience is larger than these numbers show, because many Koreans reach it through the Google app rather than a standalone install. The gap is real, but the scoreboard is incomplete, and Google’s model remains the default assistant on the country’s Android phones.
Why It Matters
South Korea matters because it previews behaviour: a market where everyone carries a smartphone and new apps spread fast. ChatGPT’s lead there, a week after India passed America as its biggest market, shows OpenAI consolidating country after country. The open question is money — turning 18 million users into paying ones — and OpenAI tests ads inside ChatGPT.
Background
OpenAI has had a busy November in ChatGPT itself. Images 2.6 arrived on 4 November, adding GIF creation and roughly 50 percent faster generation on every plan, while the GPT-6 family continues rolling out to Pro, Plus, Business and Enterprise users. In Korea, the contest now turns on whether Claude’s work-use growth can dent a lead built on habit.
Source: Aju Press report and Seoul Economic Daily coverage
0 Comments