India plans to ban an additional 50 apps — including Tencent’s Xriver and NetEase’s Onmyoji Arena — with links to China, the latest in a series of similar moves over the past one and half years, on ground of national security.
Some of the new prohibited apps, which include Sweet Selfie HD, Beauty Camera, Viva Video Editor, AppLock and Dual Space Lite, are clones or share other similarities with many of the over 300 apps affiliated with Beijing that New Delhi has banned since mid-2020 amid geopolitical tension among the two nations.
The bans began in late June when India blocked TikTok, Alibaba’s UC Browser and Tencent’s WeChat among dozens of other apps over national security concerns. In the quarters since, New Delhi has extended the ban to over 100 more apps including popular title PUBG. The game remains the only app that has made a return to Google Play Store and Apple’s AppStore in some way.
Several of these firms and app operators have attempted to address New Delhi’s concerns, but the Indian government retained the decision to ban them early last year after deeming the responses inadequate.
Market size, by the sheer volume of app downloads.
India is the largest market by download size. Last year, the South Asian nation clocked over 25 billion downloads, according to marketing research firm App Annie. Silicon Valley as well as firms from other nations including China have aggressively focused on India as they looked for the next great growth region.
ByteDance, the parent firm of TikTok, has laid off the vast majority of its employee base in India and recently shut down its edtech business in the country, TechCrunch reported.
This is a developing story. More to follow…
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