Anti-Chinese sentiment brought on by the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic has aggravated on Twitter after the recent border dispute between India and China led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers.
While many Indians are calling for a complete boycott of Chinese goods, in the tech world citizens have started deleting Chinese apps in favour of Indian alternatives. We’ve already seen that with the sudden surge in Mitron's popularity. The app was dubbed as India's replacement to TikTok, which is owned by Chinese conglomerate ByteDance.
But TikTok is not the only Chinese app popular among Indians. One of the most popular mobile games in the country was developed and published in China. Yes, we are talking about PUBG Mobile, which can be rooted back to Tencent Games, the largest publisher of video games in China.
Gaming and socialising aside, what about SHAREit, a popular media-sharing app that has over a billion downloads worldwide, including over a hundred million Indian users. SHAREit was developed under Lenovo apps and was first introduced in China.
What about work apps? CamScanner, an app used by Indians to scan documents on their phone, has over 100 million downloads in India. CamScanner’s roots can also be traced back to China.
Other popular apps like Helo, BeautyPlus and UCBrowser can all be traced back to China.
Put aside your apps, and almost every smartphone can be traced back to China, including Apple, Samsung, and other such non-Chinese brands.
Boycotting apps and Chinese companies can have serious repercussions on India's economy. Just look at the number of Chinese companies that fund Indian startups.
Read our complete coverage on the India-China border tension.
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