Türkiye’s H1 2025 app market saw a 6% rise in installs, stronger sessions and a major surge in generative AI downloads reshaping monetization and strategy.
Türkiye’s mobile app ecosystem showed resilience in the first half of 2025: installs rose, sessions grew and major verticals (gaming, finance, e-commerce) behaved differently — while generative AI apps recorded an exceptional jump in downloads that is reshaping developer strategies.
In H1 2025, overall app installs in Türkiye increased 6% year-on-year and user sessions expanded by 4%, signalling steady demand even as the market matures. Analysts characterize the moment as a move from frenetic early growth toward sustainable, export-oriented competitiveness for Turkish developers.
Gaming remains the backbone of Türkiye’s app economy. Game installs rose about 4% YoY while sessions jumped 12% in H1 2025 — driven by strong interest in adventure (+89%), idle RPG (+55%) and casual (+32%) titles. Average play sessions ran long (reported at roughly 32.8 minutes), outpacing regional and global norms.
Despite high engagement per session, long-term retention is weak: Day-30 retention for games sits near 1%, highlighting a gap between short-term engagement and sustainable user value. Developers face pressure to convert high session time into repeat play and monetization.
Finance apps posted a dramatic 30% YoY rise in installs, but session activity slipped 4% and average session length shortened to about 6.18 minutes — a pattern consistent with faster task completion (e.g., quick payments or balance checks). Importantly, finance apps show comparatively healthy retention (Day-30 ~5%), outperforming regional and global benchmarks.
E-commerce installs fell around 7% YoY, yet sessions grew 4%, outperforming global (-14%) and MENAT (-26%) declines. Marketplace and classifieds categories gained momentum (+15% installs) while deal discovery apps helped lift sessions (+22%). Average session lengths stayed robust (overall ~8.94 minutes; marketplace apps ~11.1 minutes), and retention modestly beat international averages.
Generative AI and AI-assisted apps are the clearest disruptors. Downloads of generative AI apps in Türkiye surged roughly 142.5% YoY in 2024 to an estimated 27.4 million, with major names such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini among the leaders. Many former hypercasual studios are pivoting to AI-first products — attracted by faster development cycles, lower production overhead and subscription/in-app purchase revenue models. This trend has strategic implications for monetization, talent allocation and product roadmaps.
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Adjust’s Türkiye spotlight confirms a familiar but important pattern: mature mobile markets rarely grow in every metric simultaneously — engagement and installs can diverge by vertical. Türkiye’s long average play sessions and rising finance retention point to a user base that engages deeply when given clear value, yet retention shortfalls (notably in games) reveal where product and growth teams must focus next.
The AI wave is the most consequential structural change. Rapid adoption of generative AI apps and studios’ migration to AI-first products suggests the Turkish market will see more subscription-driven businesses and tooling ecosystems (MLops, prompt-management, conversational UX frameworks). Expect consolidation: studios with strong distribution and technical talent will acquire AI capabilities rapidly, while pure hypercasual shops may pivot or be acquired.
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