Indian Apps Take Back The Leading Position From Chinese Apps In The Market

Dhir Acharya - Dec 28, 2019

Chinese apps have dominated the Indian market for a while now, but Indian apps have now taken back their leading position.

Chinese apps have been popular among Indian users for a while now. In 2018, 44 apps from Chinese developers made it to the top 100 best Android apps in the country.

However, last year also witnessed a change in that trend since local developers rose to fight. AppsFlyer, a company specialized in analytics and marketing, reported that apps by Indian developers have got back their position in the market.

In the second and third quarters of 2019, on the Play Stor and the App Store, over 80 apps out of the top 200 in Indian editions were from Indian developers as well as local companies, a 38-percent rise compared with last year. research firm App Annie released data that confirmed this.

As stated in the report, the increase of Indian apps is in correspondence to the standing of Chinese apps. In particular, last year, the Chinese app accounted for 43 percent, ranking first, but made up only 38 percent this year. Overall, Indian and Chinese apps occupy 79 percent of the list, according to the report.

This change is attributed to the launch of entertainment, news, gaming, and payment apps from Indian companies over the past one year and a half, AppsFlyer revealed after analyzing 6.5 billion installs in Q2 and Q3 2019.

However, Chinese apps (such as Chinese chat app and Chinese shopping app) are still standing strong, keeping up its impressive fight in all categories.

There are around 450 million people using smartphones in India where the laws supporting an open market are still lax. This has made the country an attractive gold mine for global developers.

A lot of firms from China like ByteDance and Xiaomi, consider India one of their biggest markets. TikTok has obtained over 200 million users in the country while Xiaomi is currently the leading phone brand in this market.

Attracting first-time internet users, who mostly have lower financial capacity, can be a big challenge. For example, travel apps cost Rs 170 per install, food and drink apps cost Rs 138 per install, and gaming apps cost Rs 13.5 per install. The categories of Chinese app in India cover various areas, including social apps (TikTok, SHAREit, Helo), Chinese translator app (like Waygo), utility apps (Cam Scanner, Xender, BeautyPlus), which you can download from the Play Store or Chinese app store like Tencent MyApp