The Indian government has announced a ban on 59 apps created by (or at least with origins in) Chinese companies, amid tensions between India and China over military clashes at the border between the two countries.
The apps have been banned “since in view of information available they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order” announced the government, according to India Today. And yes, TikTok is top of the list, which also includes Tencent Music’s QQ Music app. Surprisingly, streaming service Resso isn’t on the list, despite being launched by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.
This isn’t the first time TikTok has been censured in India: a ban from Apple and Google’s app stores in 2019 was rescinded, with ByteDance’s appeal against it claiming it was losing “up to $500,000 a day” during the outage. That’s why the ban this week is big news: India is a key market for TikTok. In April this year, analytics firm Sensor Tower claimed that TikTok had been downloaded 2bn times globally, with India accounting for 611m of those – more than 30% of the total.
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