In a recent decision taken by the Indian government, 59 Chinese mobile applications will be banned, in India. The list of 59 applications included some major, names from the market. TikTok, which had a higher share of its business in the Indian market, is included in this list.
It would be interesting to know that in 2019, when TikTok was briefly banned, in India, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok reportedly lost more than $500,000 daily. The User share of TikTok has increased tremendously since then in the Indian market. Therefore, the news must have come as a disaster for the company.
Since the brutal face-off between the Chinese and Indian army in the “Galwan Ghati“, a place in Ladakh, the air is stiff between both the countries.
In a press release following statement was issued by the government stating, “The Ministry of Information Technology, invoking its power under section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009 and in view of the emergent nature of threats has decided to block 59 apps since in view of the information available they are engaged in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order”.
The press release further mentioned, “The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) has also received many representations from citizens regarding the security of data and breach of privacy impacting upon public order issues,”
It clearly stated that this move is to “safeguard the interests of crores of Indian mobile and internet users”.
The rating of the application started falling continuously on the platform after the incident took place. On Apple store, the Chinese app used to rank in the top-5 free applications which later dropped down to 10th place in the ranking.
Similarly, TikTok saw a fall in ranking on the Google Play store and slipped from third to the fifth position in India, still managed to stay in the top 10 free applications.
It is not just the country of India, which banned the Chinese application!
Robert O’Brian, the US national security advisor, has clearly stated that the Chinese applications are used as a weapon by the Communist Party of China(CPC) to spread its ideology across the globe.
The younger generation grew highly fond of this Chinese application. The application has this younger fan base not only in India but also in countries like the US and China.
TikTok, the highest downloaded app, had more than 2-billion users. India turned out to be the largest contributor in this success, contributing 611 million user downloads.
According to the report by sensor tower, the Chinese application grew in popularity during the lockdown phase in this epidemic.
