Claude overtakes Gemini in Korea's AI app rankings

Anthropic’s Claude has overtaken Google’s Gemini to become the second-highest-grossing generative artificial intelligence app on Apple’s app store in South Korea, challenging a market order long dominated by ChatGPT and Gemini.

Claude ranked No. 2 in revenue on the app store among generative AI apps in Korea from Jan. 1 to June 5 and posted the fastest revenue growth among major AI apps, according to market tracker Sensor Tower on Saturday.

Until mid-March, Korea’s generative AI app market had largely been a two-way race between OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. But Claude surpassed Gemini on March 23, and the gap between the two services has widened since.

Anthropic’s momentum has been helped along by a string of model upgrades this year, including Claude Opus 4.8, Mythos Preview and Claude Fable 5, which have strengthened perceptions of Claude as a serious challenger in high-end AI performance.

Claude’s growth accelerated sharply in early May. On May 5, the app generated about $104,000 in daily revenue in Korea, marking an all-time high and more than doubling from the previous day.

Sensor Tower said the surge was more likely driven by existing users converting to paid subscriptions or upgrading to higher-tier plans than by a wave of new users, as downloads remained broadly stable over the same period.

Claude is also gaining ground on the web. From March to May, its website outpaced both ChatGPT and Gemini in visitor growth, according to Sensor Tower.

The usage pattern suggests Claude is building a more work-oriented user base. Some 58.8 percent of Claude users accessed the service only through its website, far higher than ChatGPT’s 22 percent and Gemini’s 34.9 percent.

“Claude’s high share of web users shows that it is expanding its presence into productivity-centered work use cases,” Sensor Tower said.

Korea has emerged as one of the most important overseas markets for major AI services. During the survey period, the US accounted for the largest share of Claude’s revenue at 41.1 percent, followed by Korea at 4.7 percent.

For ChatGPT, Korea was the third-largest revenue market after the US and Japan. For Gemini, Korea ranked second after Japan, accounting for 14.5 percent of revenue.