Government Bans 47 Apps: The government has banned 47 Chinese apps in India. Near the end of June, 59 Chinese apps had been banned by the government to “protect national interest and security” — including the hugely popular TikTok app. Now, almost 50 more apps have been banned, for operating as clones of the previously banned apps — the list of particular apps banned in the fresh decision is yet to be announced. However, it has been reported that the announcement would take place officially shortly. The government earlier banned apps including CamScanner, SHAREit, and UC Browser, among others. That ban was announced under the provisions of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act.
The decision to ban the 47 Chinese apps was taken after a security review by the Ministry of Telecom, as per various media reports.
Some of these include TikTok Lite, Helo Lite, ShareIt Lite, Bigo Lite and VFY Lite, all of which are reportedly unavailable on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. According to a Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology official, “The apps were found to be operating despite the ban via these versions. They have been taken down from application stores,”.
Over 275 Chinese apps are under scrutiny for alleged violations of national security and citizen’s privacy. The latest list reportedly includes Tencent-backed gaming app PUBG, AliExpress, ByteDance’s Resso and ULike, another gaming app Ludo World and Xiaomi’s Zili, media reports suggested.
It is believed that some top gaming Chinese apps including PUBG Mobile would be a part of the new list of banned apps. However, the government is yet to release the details pertaining to the development.
After the government initially banned 59 Chinese apps, many of their clones and similar apps had risen to the top of the Google Play rankings. Notable, Likee Lite, a toned-down version of banned Likee, had appeared on top of Google Play listings a few weeks ago. Other apps from Chinese developers, such as Snack Video, have also gained from TikTok’s ban. Likee Lite and Bigo Lite have already gone off the app stores.
Snack Video, which is owned by Chinese Kuaishou, got 10 million new downloads between June 29 and July 19, according to data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower. This was approximately 59 times the 172,000 downloads the app got between June 8 and June 28, which is the month before the ban.
Another app, Zili, which is published by smartphone stalwart Xiaomi, was the second-largest TikTok alternative, according to Sensor Tower. The firm found that Zili’s downloads grew by 167 percent to nearly 8 million during the same period.
While Indian apps have also gained from the ban, only one ranks amongst the top 3 TikTok alternatives — InMobi-owned Roposo. Zili and German app Dubsmash are the other two, and the three together got 21.8 million downloads in India post the ban, reaching 13 percent of TikTok’s installs in the first half of 2020, said Sensor Tower. The three apps have higher lifetime downloads out of all TikTok alternatives on both Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
Indian Roposo has the most lifetime downloads with 71 million installs, followed by Zili at 51 million and Dubsmash at 30.4 million.
