ChatGPT now lets you lock your chats
Meta’s AI assistant, Muse, is now one of only 12 mobile apps to reach 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days. New data from market research company Sensor Tower shows that Muse has had 10.9 million downloads since it launched in September. Of these, 10.2 million came from the United States.
Kara Lee, Sensor Tower’s Senior Insights Analyst, said that only 11 other apps have reached this level of downloads in their first 40 days. The most recent was Meta’s Threads, which reached this milestone in July 2023.
Lee said that most other apps that reached this level were mobile games, such as Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, and Pokémon GO. Apart from Threads, Disney+ was the only other app that was not a game to join this group.
Meta’s success comes partly from its ability to grow new apps by promoting them across its other services. The company has done this with both Threads and Muse. Threads was built using Instagram’s network of social connections, and its content has been added to both Facebook and Instagram. But Muse is benefiting from more than Meta’s ability to promote its AI assistant across its family of apps, which now have 3.6 billion daily active users. Meta is also spending heavily on ads to attract new users to Muse.
Sensor Tower’s data shows that Meta plans to spend 39% of its total advertising budget on promoting Muse in October, up from 23% in September. Muse has also risen from 73rd place in September to 21st place among U.S. brands by advertising impressions this month.
However, getting people to download an app and keeping them using it after the first excitement fades are two different things. Muse is keeping more users than competing AI apps such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok.
In the United States, 30% of Muse users were still using the app seven days after they first used it, and 23% were still using it after 14 days. According to Sensor Tower, competing apps had average retention rates of 19% after seven days and 16% after 14 days.
Muse also reached another milestone that shows people are actively using the app. On October 16, its number of daily active users reached 2.5 million for the first time, increasing by 15% compared with the previous week.
Meta’s newest AI app can carry out different tasks for users, and it has seen rapid success since its launch. It quickly reached No. 1 on the App Store and, at one point, even beat some of the numbers ChatGPT recorded after its launch. Muse has now passed its rivals in another measure: ChatGPT had 3.7 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days, while Grok and Claude had only 500,000 and 200,000 U.S. downloads, respectively, during their first 40 days.
Worldwide, ChatGPT did better than Muse, reaching about 15 million downloads in its first 40 days. However, the comparison is not entirely fair because ChatGPT was available to a wider audience. Muse is currently available only in the United States and Canada, while ChatGPT also attracted users in countries such as Japan, Brazil, and Germany. Japan alone accounted for 25% of ChatGPT’s worldwide downloads during its first 40 days.
Since its launch, Muse has held the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store every day except October 19, when the streaming app Kick briefly took the lead. Muse has since returned to the top spot as of Tuesday. It has also ranked No. 1 on Google Play over the past 30 days.