SEOUL, November 08 (AJP) - More than a third of South Koreans used ChatGPT on their phones in October, a sign that artificial intelligence chatbots have moved from novelty to a routine part of daily life.
ChatGPT's mobile app recorded 18,762,276 monthly active users in South Korea last month, according to data released Sunday by Mobileindex, an app analytics service run by IGAWorks. That was in a country of about 51.8 million people, according to the 2025 census by the Ministry of Data and Statistics.
The figure measures users who opened the app at least once during the month. It was the first above 18 million since Mobileindex began tracking the app.
ChatGPT's user base grew 43.8 percent from 13.05 million a year earlier and 4.3 percent from 17.99 million in September.
People also spent far more time with the app. Total usage reached about 50.98 million hours in October, up 113.9 percent from about 23.83 million hours a year earlier and well ahead of the growth in users. The average user spent about 163 minutes on ChatGPT during the month, 53 minutes more than in October 2025.
ChatGPT, developed by U.S. company OpenAI, accounted for about 91 percent of users of the AI apps Mobileindex tracks, up from about 84 percent a year earlier.
Many users now run several services side by side. Jeong Gu-jeong, a 44-year-old business owner, splits her work among ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
"I find Claude most useful for paperwork and planning," Jeong said. "AI helps me get through chores faster, which used to take me a long time because I run a one-person company."
Claude, made by U.S. AI company Anthropic, saw its monthly users rise about 15-fold to about 2.1 million from about 139,000 a year earlier. The jump lifted it from seventh to second place among AI apps tracked by Mobileindex.
Claude users also stayed longer. Total usage reached about 3.88 million hours, 22 times the level a year earlier, while average time per user rose from about 75 minutes to 111 minutes.
Other services lost ground. A., SK Telecom's AI assistant, had about 1.07 million monthly users, down 42.5 percent from a year earlier. Perplexity fell 30.9 percent to about 569,000, while Elon Musk's Grok rose 6.8 percent to about 517,000.
The figures cover only Android and iOS app use in South Korea and exclude web access. Mobileindex said Google's Gemini can also be reached through the Google app, so the data may not reflect its full usage.
ChatGPT led new installs in October with about 790,000, though that was 16.2 percent fewer than a year earlier. Claude came second with about 490,000, 13 times its total from October 2025.
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