Think Apps 2026 tells studios the next leap will come from earning more per user, not just winning more installs, as acquisition costs rise and growth in downloads slows
LAHORE: Apps and games built by Pakistani developers were downloaded 4.6 billion times worldwide over the past 12 months, Google said on Thursday, as it gathered the country’s studios at Lahore Fort to argue that artificial intelligence, not raw download counts, should drive their next phase of growth.
The company’s annual Think Apps event, billed as the industry’s biggest of the year, brought local developers together with global and regional executives inside the Mughal-era fort, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Sessions focused on AI tools, user growth strategies and monetisation models aimed at helping studios compete in higher-value markets.
Volume is no longer enough
The headline figure shows how far Pakistan’s app sector reaches. It also hints at a plateau. Google said in 2023 that Pakistani-made apps were downloaded about 4 billion times in 2022, which means annual downloads have grown by roughly 15% over about four years, far slower than the 30% compound annual growth the company reported for 2018 to 2020.
That is the problem Google set out to address. Competition is rising and the cost of acquiring each new user is climbing, squeezing studios that built their businesses on large volumes of cheap installs for hyper-casual games and utility apps. Google’s message was that AI can speed up coding, cut the cost of producing art and creative assets, and help developers build products around new user needs, but that success will still depend on product quality and keeping users engaged.
“The global impact of Pakistan’s developers reflects the world-class talent and ambition driving the local ecosystem,” said Farhan Qureshi, Google’s Cluster Director for Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Frontier Markets. “By empowering developers with cutting-edge AI capabilities, our goal is to accelerate this momentum and enable studios to build high-value products that resonate globally, foster sustainable business growth, and elevate Pakistan’s position in the global digital economy.”
Build, yield, scale
Google framed its pitch around what it called a Build, Yield and Scale roadmap. Google Cloud AI is offered for building products, Google Ads and AdMob for winning users and earning revenue from them, and expansion into new categories and audiences as the route to international growth. Google Play, the company noted, reaches more than three billion monthly active users.
The roadmap also serves Google’s commercial interests: Pakistani studios are significant buyers of advertising to acquire users and earn much of their revenue through Google’s ad network, so deeper use of its AI and cloud tools ties the sector more closely to the company’s platforms.
A Lahore-grown industry
From fewer than 30 people at its start, Pakistan’s app and gaming industry now employs more than 30,000 professionals, according to Google. Much of it is concentrated in Lahore, home to studios such as Game District, whose portfolio passed 2.2 billion downloads in 2025 with revenue up 55%, according to the company, and Funsol, both singled out by Google as examples of an ecosystem built for global audiences.
The city’s role extends beyond studios. This week Lahore is also hosting the PUBG Mobile Global Open, the first official global PUBG Mobile esports event staged in Pakistan, and the Punjab government has opened an AI intelligence hub in Lahore as part of a broader technology push.
The sector feeds into Pakistan’s growing digital exports. IT services exports reached $4.6 billion in the last fiscal year, with freelancers contributing $1.6 billion, and information and communication technology exports have risen nearly 20% in recent official data. Games and apps, which earn in dollars through global app stores and ad networks, are among the segments with the most room to grow.
Training and devices
Google repeated its pledge to train 100,000 Pakistani developers in AI by 2028. It also cited local production of 500,000 Chromebooks for digital education, under a partnership that launched Pakistan’s first Chromebook assembly line at the National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation’s facility in Haripur in November 2025, and online safety training for 200,000 families through its Digital Pasban programme.
Punjab has been pursuing its own AI skills agenda, introducing Gemini and prompt-engineering lessons for students in grades eight to ten, while the Punjab Higher Education Commission has urged universities to broaden their offerings beyond AI and computer science. Lahore’s young graduates, meanwhile, continue to turn to freelancing and online work as a route into the global economy.
Policy voices in the province argue that the benefits of AI must spread beyond the tech sector, with Ali Dar, the chief minister’s adviser on AI who heads the Office of AI Punjab, saying last week that Punjab’s AI push must reach farmers and small firms.
The test for Pakistani studios will be whether AI tools translate into higher revenue per user and more original intellectual property, rather than simply cheaper production of the same kinds of games. With download growth slowing, the industry’s next milestone may be measured less in billions of installs than in dollars earned from each one.
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