India to ban over 50 more China-linked apps

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 newly 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 escalating geopolitical tension among the two nations.

The blocking began in late June when India banned TikTok, Alibaba’s UC Browser and Tencent’s WeChat and dozens of other apps with links to China over national security concerns. New Delhi, which has never explicitly mentioned China in these announcements, did not offer an official statement on its move Monday.

The Indian government has extended the ban to over 200 more apps including popular title PUBG. The game remains the only known app that has made a return to Google Play Store and Apple’s AppStore in India in some way.

Several of other 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. (Data period: 2021. Image and data credits: App Annie)

India is by far the largest market globally by app installs. Last year, the South Asian nation clocked over 25 billion downloads, according to analytics firm App Annie. US giants as well as firms from other nations including China and South Korea aggressively focused on India in the past decade as they looked for the next great growth region. In comparison, only a handful of Indian firms operate in China.

After India refused to revoke its ban on TikTok, ByteDance (the app’s parent firm) laid off the vast majority of its employee base in India and recently shut down its edtech business in the country, TechCrunch reported. The ban in India did not make much impact on ByteDance’s revenue.



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3GSWt7F
via IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

6 investors discuss why AI is more than just a buzzword in biotech

As ChatGPT has so aptly demonstrated, AI is now truly entering the mainstream consciousness. That’s why we weren’t very surprised when a slew of investors told us they rarely see a biotech startup that doesn’t incorporate AI in some form or other these days. “Most of the companies we have seen have an AI component to support the discovery or development processes,” Francisco Dopazo, a general partner at Humboldt Fund told TechCrunch recently. But despite becoming quite the buzzword, AI’s apparent ubiquity in biotech isn’t actually driving deal flow or higher valuations. So to get a better idea of how AI is affecting biotech in 2022, we asked six investors to tell us what they look for in a biotech startup today. For Franck Lescure, a partner at Elaia Partners, in biotech, having an AI component isn’t an automatic deal closer. “We do not favor biotech startups with extant AI over those without: Bio-revolution is not only digital. Digital is one tool; the other major tool is the livin
Read more

Voiceflow, a Canada-based SaaS platform that lets companies launch their own voice and chat bots, raises $20M Series A led by Felicis Ventures (Igor Bosilkovski/Forbes)

Image
Igor Bosilkovski / Forbes : Voiceflow, a Canada-based SaaS platform that lets companies launch their own voice and chat bots, raises $20M Series A led by Felicis Ventures   —  Canadian collaborative conversational AI tool Voiceflow announced today that it has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Felicis Ventures. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3rFQ9St via IFTTT
Read more

Ex-staffers say Twitter's mass firing of security staff and growing reliance on automation will help China and other authoritarian regimes in silencing critics (Adam Rawnsley/Rolling Stone)

Image
Adam Rawnsley / Rolling Stone : Ex-staffers say Twitter's mass firing of security staff and growing reliance on automation will help China and other authoritarian regimes in silencing critics   —  Elon's mass firing of security staff and increased reliance on automation is going to make it easier for tyrants to shout … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/xQsF2ef via IFTTT
Read more