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Agencies
India’s government has petitioned a state court to stop any of the Chinese companies whose 59 apps it recently banned from obtaining an injunction to block the order, according to two sources and the legal filing, according to Reuters.
Last week, India declared that the world’s second-largest internet market was shutting the door to dozens of Chinese firms for an indefinite period.
India said it would ban 59 apps and services, including ByteDance’s TikTok, Alibaba Group’s UC Browser and UC News, and Tencent’s WeChat over cybersecurity concerns.
New Delhi is open to meeting these firms and hear their defenses, but for now, local telecom operators and other internet service providers have been ordered to block access to these services. Google and Apple have already complied with India’s order and delisted the apps from their app stores.
India’s order is already shifting the market in favor of local firms, several of which have rushed to cash in on the app ban. A crop of recently launched short-form video sharing services have amassed tens of millions of users just this week.
It’s far from a coincidence that China and India have been engaged in a stand-off in the border region of Ladakh, just north of the Himalayas. Clashes last month prompted a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment in the country. This raises the question of whether the TikTok ban is really about privacy or the moving of a pawn in a wider geopolitical game.
Just hours after the announcement, TikTok’s apps could no longer be found in either Apple’s or Google’s Indian app stores, and ISPs were ordered to block access to all 59 apps on the list, including the popular strategy game Clash Of Kings.
Home to more than 1.3 billion people, India has a huge smartphone user base and English-speaking population, which make it the world’s largest social-media market. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that India is also TikTok’s biggest market, with nearly 191 million downloads at the end of 2019; the US is at a distant second with nearly 41 million.
India’s government has petitioned a state court to stop any of the Chinese companies whose 59 apps it recently banned from obtaining an injunction to block the order, according to two sources and the legal filing, according to Reuters.
Last week, India declared that the world’s second-largest internet market was shutting the door to dozens of Chinese firms for an indefinite period.
India said it would ban 59 apps and services, including ByteDance’s TikTok, Alibaba Group’s UC Browser and UC News, and Tencent’s WeChat over cybersecurity concerns.
New Delhi is open to meeting these firms and hear their defenses, but for now, local telecom operators and other internet service providers have been ordered to block access to these services. Google and Apple have already complied with India’s order and delisted the apps from their app stores.
India’s order is already shifting the market in favor of local firms, several of which have rushed to cash in on the app ban. A crop of recently launched short-form video sharing services have amassed tens of millions of users just this week.
It’s far from a coincidence that China and India have been engaged in a stand-off in the border region of Ladakh, just north of the Himalayas. Clashes last month prompted a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment in the country. This raises the question of whether the TikTok ban is really about privacy or the moving of a pawn in a wider geopolitical game.
Just hours after the announcement, TikTok’s apps could no longer be found in either Apple’s or Google’s Indian app stores, and ISPs were ordered to block access to all 59 apps on the list, including the popular strategy game Clash Of Kings.
Home to more than 1.3 billion people, India has a huge smartphone user base and English-speaking population, which make it the world’s largest social-media market. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that India is also TikTok’s biggest market, with nearly 191 million downloads at the end of 2019; the US is at a distant second with nearly 41 million.
