The number of uninstalls of the ChatGPT app in the US rose by 295% on Saturday compared to the previous day. Normally, the daily uninstall rate of the app is around 9%. The trigger is very likely the announcement of a partnership between OpenAI and the US Department of Defense. The figures come from tracking provider SensorTower; the magazine TechCrunch reported on it.
Parallel to the uninstalls, new downloads of ChatGPT also collapsed. They fell by 13% on Saturday and dropped by another 5% the following Sunday. Consumer dissatisfaction is also strongly reflected in App Store ratings: 1-star ratings for ChatGPT rose by 775% on Saturday, while 5-star ratings halved during the same period.
Anthropic Benefits as Winner of the Situation
Competitor Anthropic, on the other hand, recorded an enormous upswing with Claude. US downloads of Claude jumped by 37% on Friday, February 27, and rose by another 51% on Saturday. According to data from Appfigures, daily US downloads of Claude surpassed ChatGPT downloads for the first time on Saturday.
One reason for this increase is certainly Anthropic's clear positioning: The company had declared that it would not enter into any cooperation with the US military. Anthropic did not want to agree to the conditions set because it feared the AI could be used to monitor US citizens or for fully autonomous weapon systems. These were areas for which AI was not yet safe enough, according to the company. This stance apparently resonated greatly with many consumers.
Shifts in App Store Charts
These changes quickly became noticeable in the App Store rankings. Claude is now the number 1 free iPhone app in six countries outside the USA, including Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, and Norway. In the German iTunes Store, Claude is also in 1st place; ChatGPT ranks third behind Google Gemini.
According to estimates by Similarweb, US downloads of Claude last week were about 20 times higher than in January.
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