Anthropic's artificial intelligence (AI) service Claude has overtaken Google's Gemini to claim the No. 2 spot in revenue in Korea's generative AI app market.
According to market research firm Sensor Tower on Friday, Claude has ranked second in revenue and first in revenue growth among Korea's iOS generative AI apps so far this year.
Korea's generative AI market had been a two-way race between ChatGPT and Gemini, but Claude has been widening its lead since it first surpassed Gemini on March 23.
Growth steepened in early May. On May 5, Claude posted daily revenue of about $104,000, setting an all-time high. The figure was more than double that of the previous day.
Citing the fact that download numbers remained similar over the same period, Sensor Tower analyzed that "the revenue increase is likely driven by existing users converting to paid subscriptions or upgrading to higher-tier plans, rather than by an influx of new users."
Korea's share of the market is also notable. Looking at Claude's revenue share by country over the same period, Korea (4.7%) ranked as the second-largest revenue market after the United States (41.1%). For ChatGPT, Korea ranked behind the United States (33.1%) and Japan (5.3%), while for Gemini, Korea (14.5%) ranked as the No. 2 market behind Japan (15.0%).
Growth on the web was also confirmed. By visitor growth rate from March to May this year, Claude's website outpaced both ChatGPT and Gemini. Some 58.8% of Claude users use only the website, far exceeding ChatGPT (22.0%) and Gemini (34.9%).
By contrast, the share of users who use only the app was 26.8% for Claude, compared with 56.1% for ChatGPT. Sensor Tower assessed that "the high share of web usage is evidence that Claude is expanding its presence beyond simple mobile AI into productivity-focused work domains."
Meanwhile, OpenAI is reviewing plans to sharply cut the price of its AI services to gain an edge over rival Anthropic in the competition for corporate customers. According to a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report, OpenAI is discussing plans to lower the price of "tokens," the basic unit used to calculate AI service usage fees, anticipating that Anthropic will move to cut prices amid intensifying competition. A token is a unit measuring the amount of text and data an AI model processes, and corporate customers pay according to the number of tokens used.
