Chinese Apps See Million Of Downloads In India Despite Border Conflict And Resentment Toward China's Products

As the tension between India and China shows no sign of easing, Indians’ resentment toward the East Asian country and its products is growing fast. So much so that an app named Remove China App saw millions of downloads in just a few days.

However, in reality, according to data from SensorTower, an analytics platform, border conflict doesn’t stop Indians from downloading Chinese apps. From May 25 to June 14, four out of 15 most popular apps in India are developed by Chinese companies, including Helo and TikTok, owned by ByteDance, PUBG Mobile of Tencent, and UVideo.

The top 15 apps also have two made in India, which are Ludo King and Aarogya Setu. Both of them have no notable competitors made by Chines companies.

Even before the border conflict, TikTok has faced several obstacles in India, starting with the accusation of the app promoting inappropriate content and making it easier for predators to prey on children.

Last month, the tension heightens after the YouTube vs TikTok brawl. When India enters its lengthy lockdown as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, a bunch of videos promoting domestic violence, homophobia, misogyny, and racism surfaced on TikTok and attracts millions of views.

This has sparked another trend of demanding the Chinese app to be banned in India. After that, TikTok was flooded with one-star review on Google Play Store.

The situation creates tons of opportunities for Indian companies to make TikTok’s substitutes. The most notable is Mitron, which also has its own scandal to deal with when it was accused of buying the code from Qboxus, a Pkistan company. However, the firm’s founder denied this accusation in a recent interview.

Mitron was later removed from Play Store for violating the platform’s policy but after a few tweaks, it is now back on.

Between May 25 and June 14, Mitron was downloaded 4.2 million times and the app’s life time download stands at 10 million, according to SensorTower. Even with that success, Mitron still has a long way to go to gain the market share of an established app like TikTok.

On the list of top apps with a large number of active users in India, TikTok is the only among Chinese apps to be featured.

But even if users in India stop using TikTok all together, there are still some other apps like Paytm, Zoom, and MXPlayer that have investment from China. So the real question here is how much Indians are willing to go with the boycott China campaign.

Indians will be hard-pressed to find immediate replacement for PUBG Mobile and TikTok right away, so it is unrealistic expecting an overnight switch.

The ongoing border tension between India and China is expected to fuel the resentment even more. Recently, Indian intelligence agencies have advised the government against 52 Chinese apps, including WeChat, Sharelt, and TikTok.

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