Can a tool app that lacks "sexy" features still generate monthly revenues of tens of millions? Is it time for tool apps to seize a new window of oppo
Since the early days of the mobile Internet, utility apps have been one of the most common choices for developers going global. With their characteristics of "lightweight + essential need + easy monetization", they have helped many entrepreneurs enter overseas markets.
Produced by | Baixing Global Editorial Department
Author | Li Shuang
As trendy applications such as live streaming, short videos, and AI have emerged one after another, the popularity of utility apps seems to be gradually declining. However, the situation on social media platforms and app charts shows a different picture. On TikTok, there are 13,000 short videos tagged with "iPhone storage". Correspondingly, a cleaning app has long occupied the top spot on the US iOS utility app best - selling list. Similar situations can also be found in other utility categories. Overseas users are willing to pay for apps that help them find lost remote controls or subscribe to apps for long - term plant identification. Although they may not seem "sexy", they actually meet stable essential needs and have clear value. More and more developers and platforms are beginning to re - evaluate the value of utility apps: Utility products are not "leftovers" but a global - going category that has long - standing value due to the principle of "function equals value". Looking at the current situation, this might be a good time to reinvent utility apps.
01 Why do utility apps have long - term explosive power in their "re - rise"?
Many seemingly trivial daily annoyances, such as losing the remote control, getting a "storage space full" alert on the phone, or wanting to know the name of a plant in the park, actually hide business opportunities worth tens of millions of dollars.
Take remote control apps as an example. The monthly consumer spending on this category in the overseas market has exceeded ten million dollars. The key driver of growth is that in the past five years, smart TVs have become widely popular, and more and more devices support WiFi control. This enables iPhones, which originally did not have infrared functions, to perform remote control operations, providing the "perfect" entry point for apps to solve users' urgent problems and drive paid subscriptions. In more persistent essential need scenarios, photo cleaning tools have long occupied the top positions on the US iOS utility app best - selling list by addressing the high - frequency pain point of "freeing up storage space". Through functions such as quickly cleaning duplicate photos and compressing video sizes, they have become a stable cash - flow source for many teams. The monthly revenue of the hit app "Cleanup" has reached 8 million dollars.
The monthly revenue of "Cleanup" reaches 8 million dollars | Source: Sensor Tower
Identification tools demonstrate the ability of utility apps to dig deeper into vertical scenarios and expand in a segmented manner. From plants, coins to stones, birds, etc., developers have continuously launched new products, with a cumulative total of over 1,300 apps launched, driving the monthly consumer spending on the entire identification category to 27 million dollars.
These cases show that utility apps have never been "declining players"; they have just been developing quietly. According to data from platforms such as TikTok for Business, this track is still heating up. The proportion of IAA (In - App Advertising) consumption of utility apps has remained at a high level for a long time, and the IAP (In - App Purchase) model is also growing steadily, with more and more players entering the market. Utility products can drive revenue through advertising and build a solid foundation through subscriptions, and their commercialization capabilities are increasing simultaneously.
This also means that the opportunity to make money is no longer an accidental phenomenon of individual products, but a structural dividend released by the entire track. Utility apps are entering a new high - light period of "function equals value". However, the threshold for utility products has never been high, and the tool - based nature results in insufficiently strong core barriers. Perhaps the next question worthy of attention is how developers can gain an advantage in the competition of business efficiency?
02 How to scale up the business? "Multiple products and multiple packages" has become the mainstream approach
In the utility app track, more and more developers are realizing that relying on just one or two single products to support the overall business can no longer bring sustainable revenue growth. What really drives business expansion is usually not the accidental success of a single idea or a hit product, but a stable product matrix composed of multiple products.
Specifically, the business volume of this product matrix depends on three key factors:
. Whether the covered categories are broad enough —— Each new scenario covered means one more chance to find a high - return product;
. The number of apps being operated —— By promoting single, double, or multiple apps simultaneously, developers can test different user groups and monetization strategies within a controllable budget and find the product combination suitable for the market more quickly;
. The profitability of a single app —— This is affected by factors such as creativity, advertising rhythm, and category competition. These factors determine the advertising cost, which in turn affects the profit margin. Although there is some potential for amplification in this part, the operable space and upper limit are relatively clear.
Therefore, most mature developers are turning to a combined approach, testing across categories and creating multiple products with relatively differentiated positioning under one category, that is, the so - called "multiple products and multiple packages". For example, the same team can build a multi - category matrix around "health", including sleep health, calorie monitoring, fitness, and mental health, and explore the monetization potential one by one; in high - potential categories such as cleaning tools, different versions can be created with different functional focuses, such as storage cleaning, battery optimization, and junk scanning, to increase the market share of the category by covering different user groups.
In reality, when many developers implement the "multiple categories and multiple packages" strategy, they often face a practical problem: Which categories are worth investing in? Which markets have more explosive potential? As the competition in the utility app track intensifies, the traditional product - selection method based on experience and intuition can no longer support the need for large - scale expansion. To more steadily promote the multi - category layout, many teams will combine platform data and industry trends to find more cost - effective entry directions.
03 What are the high - potential directions worthy of key investment?
Based on Baixing Global's long - term observation, the utility app category is gradually entering a transition period of "new and old intersection". On the one hand, traditional tools such as cleaning, scanning, and wallpaper still have stable monetization space; on the other hand, more and more developers are trying to reinvent utility apps around vertical scenarios, combining AI, content, and interaction design to explore new business space from familiar demand entry points. Plant identification, widget wallpapers, and various AI tool products that have emerged rapidly recently are representatives of this trend.
Take the AI calorie identification tool "Cal AI" as an example. Although there were already mature tools for "diet recording" (such as "MyFitnessPal" and "Calorie Counter" were launched in 2009 and later), this product led by high - school student Zach achieved a "new interpretation" of the old demand through AI recognition ability and the TikTok channel: By collaborating with fitness and beauty influencers on TikTok for distribution and intuitively conveying the content of calorie recognition through photos, it quickly gained a large amount of exposure. Currently, there are more than 3,000 short videos tagged with #Cal AI on TikTok, including many videos with hundreds of thousands of likes. Its monthly revenue is currently stable at 3 million dollars, and there are also single products such as "Fastic AI" and "BitePal" with monthly revenues of hundreds of thousands of dollars, forming a segmented trend of AI calorie identification.
It is worth noting that the emergence of these AI tools on social media platforms does not seem to be accidental. Blake Anderson, who participated in creating "Cal AI" and later launched the male AI beauty scoring tool "Umax" and the AI wingman "Plug AI", has repeatedly verified the combined approach of "clear demand + social media distribution". Whether it is "Umax", which combines entertainment and self - improvement, or "Plug AI", which automatically generates flirting lines, TikTok is the key advertising platform, and short videos with millions of likes have become the norm, with the estimated playback volume of a single video exceeding tens of millions. "Umax" has also made it onto the a16z Top 50 GenAI App list, and the monthly revenue of "Plug AI" is currently stable at hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The common feature of this batch of AI tools is that the entry threshold is generally not high. A small team of a few people can complete the product construction. For example, Zach was still a high - school student when he started his business, and Blake learned programming with the help of AI and did not have much relevant experience before. This is also consistent with the observation of TikTok for Business. AI tools are considered an entry - level category among IAP products, with a development difficulty similar to that of sleep management and media editing products. One can enter the market with certain external resources and design. The real threshold often lies in whether one can accurately identify the demand and detonate the spread with the "right expression".
Blake once shared his insights into users: First, the simplest things are often the most difficult. Fitness, flirting, and diet management may be easy for some people, but not for others; second, users are willing to pay for convenience, even for things that they could originally do with existing tools; finally, self - motivation plays a much greater role than external persuasion. His product matrix is almost a perfect response to the above insights. He finds simple and clear usage scenarios, stimulates user interest, and then amplifies the awareness through the short - video channel. There are already many "star developers" like Blake in the AI tool track, but from the platform's perspective, we don't have to limit our attention to the IAP products mentioned. For example, on the iOS platform, AI tools that monetize through IAA also show stable advertising consumption. There are also many opportunities on Android. In addition to AI tools, news and information, media playback, and short - video apps have relatively high recovery potential, and their advertising consumption shows a double - month - on - month growth trend, becoming the choice for many teams to enter the market.
Of course, product selection is important, but the key to whether an app can really gain traction and achieve scale - up lies in product refinement and advertising strategies at the implementation stage. We can see that developers are actively embracing platform products and tools to accelerate the cold start and improve advertising efficiency. Taking TikTok for Business as an example, when a new app enters the market, it is recommended to set the bid with reference to the overall market and conduct rapid tests. Overall, a strategy of combining TikTok and Pangle ad positions should be adopted, and the advertising objectives should be reasonably selected according to different monetization models. At the same time, automated tools such as Smart+ provided by the platform are becoming an important engine for developers to improve the overall advertising efficiency.
For developers, understanding how to use these new platforms and tools and combining them with their own resource - matching capabilities is also the key to seizing the next wave of structural opportunities.
Conclusion
The growth window for utility apps is reopening. Whether it is in product selection strategies or advertising implementation, platforms are providing clearer and more systematic support paths. Developers can combine their own capabilities with intelligent tools, start from actual scenarios, and find a controllable and stable growth method. In the seemingly unremarkable but always in - demand utility app track, new opportunities may be accumulating.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Baixing Global". Author: Baixing Editor. Republished with permission.
