After banning 59 Chinese applications last month, the Narendra Modi-led Central Government has banned 47 more apps, which were operating as clones of the sooner banned apps, reported India Today.
According to the report, the govt will soon release an inventory of the 47 banned Chinese applications. It’s also prepared an inventory of over 250 Chinese apps, including apps linked to Alibaba and Tencent’s PUBG, and noted the report.
Earlier, India had banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, UC Browser, Helo, Likee, CamScanner, Vigo Video, Mi Video Call – Xiaomi, Clash of Kings also as e-commerce platforms like Club Factory and Shein. Law, Electronics and knowledge Technology Minister, Shankar Prasad had said that the government banned these apps for safety, security, defence, sovereignty and integrity of India.
IT Ministry during a statement had said that they received many complaints from various origin of counting many reports about misuse of mobile apps that is available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing user data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India.
Some of the top gaming Chinese applications also are expected to be banned within the new list that is being involved, sources said that’s Chinese applications, are being reviewed and have been sharing data with the Chinese agencies.
The Ministry of data Technology, request it’s under section 69A of the knowledge Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the knowledge Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of data by Public) Rules 2009 and in sight of the emergent nature of threats has decided to dam 59 apps and since the sight of data available they are engaged in activities which is detrimental to dominion defence of India and security of state and public order
An official statement is awaited.
Reportedly, the govt has involved an inventory of 275 Chinese apps and can see if there’s any violation in terms of national security and user privacy. consistent with a report within the Economic Times, “Tencent-backed PubG, Alibaba-owned Ali Express, phone maker Xiaomi, music streaming app Reso, owned by ByteDance among others are a neighborhood of the list of apps that would be banned by the government”.
After the govt initially banned 59 Chinese apps, many of their clones and similar apps had risen to the highest of the Google Play rankings. Notable, Likee Lite, a toned-down version of banned Likee, had appeared on top of Google Play listings a couple of weeks ago. Other apps from Chinese developers, like 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 Saints Peter and Paul and July 19, consistent with data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower. This was approximately 59 times of the 172,000 downloads the app got between June 8 and June 28, which is that the month before the ban.
Another app, Zili, which is published by smartphone stalwart Xiaomi, was the second largest TikTok alternative, consistent with Sensor Tower. The firm found that Zili’s downloads grew by 167 percent to just about 8 million during an equivalent period.
While Indian apps have also gained from the ban, just one ranks amongst the highest 3 TikTok alternatives — InMobi-owned Roposo. Zili and German app Dubsmash are the opposite two, and therefore the three together got 21.8 million downloads in India post the ban, reaching 13 percent of TikTok’s installs within the half of 2020, said Sensor Tower. The three apps have the upper lifetime downloads out of all TikTok alternatives on both Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
Indian Roposo has the foremost lifetime downloads with 71 million installs, followed by Zili at 51 million and Dubsmash at 30.4 million.
The Union electronics and knowledge technology ministry in an interim order on 29 June said that the apps were engaged in activities that are prejudicial to the defence of India, and security of state and public order. Following this, the ministry sent an inventory of 79 inquiries to these banned apps and gave them three-weeks’ time to reply , failing which can cause their permanent ban.
Later, Prasad termed the ban as a “digital strike” on China because it came within the wake of the face-off between the Indian Army and Chinese troops at Galwan Valley in Eastern Ladakh along the road of Actual Control (LAC) on June 15, which also killed 20 Indian personnel, in one among the foremost bloody confrontations between the 2 sides since the 1972 war.
We banned Chinese apps to guard data of countrymen and it had been a digital strike, he said India is for peace, if somebody casts an look we’ll provides a befitting reply,” he added.
