Market research firm QuestMobile released the 2026 Mid-Year AI Application Market Development Insight Report. Data shows that as of May, the monthly active users of AI-native apps reached 499 million, up 85.4% year-on-year, reversing the previous situation where terminal manufacturer AI apps and AI app plugins dominated. The average monthly usage time for AI-native apps reached 183 minutes, up 40% year-on-year, fully crossing the threshold of daily necessities.

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The first-tier structure is stable, with increasing Matthew effect

The top 10 structure is becoming more stable, with the first tier consisting of Doubao, Qianwen, and DeepSeek having monthly active users of 382 million, 167 million, and 130 million, respectively. Under the Matthew effect, the year-on-year growth rates are highly concentrated in the first tier, with Doubao's growth rate at 172.1%, and Qianwen's growth rate as high as 5792.9%. In terms of user stickiness, the percentage of users spending more than 10 minutes on Doubao, DeepSeek, and Kimi was 27.5%, 30.0%, and 26.1%, respectively, showing significant improvement compared to the same period last year.

Doubao's user base demonstrates strong resilience

As of June, the activity levels of the three types of applications of Doubao remained stable. The App side added 13.78 million users compared to May. This confirms that the "universal access + value-added" model did not cause user attrition, and the user base showed strong resilience under the pressure of payment. Among the overall monthly active data of five categories of AI applications, terminal manufacturer AI apps had the highest monthly active users at 755 million, followed by AI app plugins at 644 million, and AI-native apps at 499 million, but the latter had the fastest growth rate and was rapidly reshaping the competitive landscape.