The Indian government has decided to ban 59 Chinese apps. Most of these apps are utility apps which helps smartphone users with multiple activities like cleaning the phone, scanning documents and even clicking perfect selfies.
So, what are the alternatives now available for Indian consumers?
Here we take a look at few of the most popular ones and their alternatives:
TikTok: Perhaps the most famous of all these Chinese apps, TikTok has become a rage among Indians sharing short videos, dance steps and sharing them in their community of followers.
Alternative: ShareChat.
Xender and ShareIT: Both the apps are used to share heavy files like games and movies.
Alternatives: Dropbox or even Google Drive while few sharing apps will be paid ones.
Kwai, Helo, Likee, Bigo Live: All are video sharing apps, like TikTok and are extremely popular among Indians.
Alternatives: ShareChat or Roposo.
CamScanner: CamScanner, which is on the list of banned apps in India, is frequently used by many Indian users to create digital copies of of physical documents.
The app also acts as an archive of the scanned documents. This ban means that users can lose access to all the documents that have scanned and stored over the years. While users can still go to their CamScanner accounts and download copies of the stored files, CamScanner doesn't have a feature for bulk downloads. This means that users will have to download each file individually, which is a tedious task.
Alternatives: Adobe Scan, Microsoft Office Lens and Google Drive.
UCBrowser and Apus Browser: These browsers are mostly pre-downloaded with Chinese smartphones.
Alternatives: Google Chrome, Brave and many others.
UCNews: Part of the UC stable, UC News offers news articles for quick reference.
Alternatives: Inshorts and DailyHunt.
Baidu Maps: Details about its user base are sketchy.
Alternatives: Google Maps, MapMyIndia.
Club Factory and Shein: Shein and Club Factory were competing with Indian fashion brands like Myntra and Flipkart. These Chinese e-commerce apps are famous for their massive discounts and cheap designer clothes.
Alternatives: Flipkart,Myntra, Amazon, etc.
Virus Cleaner: It is an anti-virus app for smartphones.
Alternatives: There are many popular anti virus apps in the Play Store. For example, Avast Antivirus.
Also Read | Chinese apps, including TikTok, banned: These are the most popular on the Play Store
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