Bye Bye TikTok — India’s Big Ban On Chinese Mobile Application

Which are prejudicial to sovereignty & integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order.

The Indian government has banned 59 Chinese apps amid security and privacy concerns. However, this has not come as a surprising move as a few days ago Indian intelligence agencies had advised people to stop use of 53 mobile applications linked to China over privacy concerns.

You can find the complete list of the banned apps here: https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1635206

On a side note, continue your happy dance Pubg users, it quite worked for you guys as its a South Korean company and China’s Tencent Games owes only a 10% stake in the company.

The reasoning behind

The Ministry of Information Technology has received many complaints from various sources including several reports about the misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers that have locations outside India, the release said.

The throne

China is called the world leader in e-commerce as well as one of the largest mobile app economies in the world. Chinese apps TikTok, Likee, SHAREit were among the world’s top downloaded apps in 2019.

Reports reveal that TikTok, Likee, Helo, SHAREit, UC Browser were among the top ten downloaded apps in 2019 in India. India is said to be the biggest driver of TikTok’s growth with nearly 120 million users contributing to the downloads. Alibaba’s UC Browser is claimed to have half of its global installs from India. Helo app is also said to have over 50 million active Indian users.

It does not come as a surprise that India is the primary market for so many Chinese mobile apps. And why not? India’s young audience has been the target market for so many countries.

It has become very important for foreign companies to have a strong presence in a market like India.

This app ban ideally works well in favour of India for now, as these Chinese application companies will have to take a huge hit from the ban — their presence, their brand, market share, and their business.

However, it is time for India to get in the process of taking advantage of the opportunity and create equivalent apps and products for its people. It is a pretty long process but it has to start now.

The ongoing story

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Tuesday at a briefing said that ‘China is strongly concerned about the relevant notice issued by the Indian side. We are checking on and verifying the situation’.

TikTok India also issued a statement saying that it has complied with the privacy rules and has not shared any user data with any foreign government. The company is in the process of complying with the government’s order, it said.

As the border and trade tensions rise, it will be important to see if there would be any upcoming retaliation or just the talks will do wonders.

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