NEW DELHI: The Government of India on Wednesday announced that it was banning another 118 Chinese apps, including the popular gaming app PUBG, over cybersecurity concerns even as geopolitical tension between the two neighbouring nations has continued to escalate.“This move will safeguard the interests of crores of Indian mobile and internet users.
This decision is a targeted move to ensure safety, security and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace,” said India’s IT ministry in a statement. For Player Unknown’s Battle Ground (PUBG), the ban means losing around 40 million monthly active users in its biggest global market—India. In 2019, PUBG contributed $1.3 billion into parent company Tencent’s coffers, with 24 per cent of its total downloads coming from India.
Among the new apps that have been banned on Wednesday include Baidu, Alipay, WeChat Work, Tencent Weiyun, Rise of Kingdoms, APUS Launcher, Tencent Weiyun, VPN for TikTok, CamCard and numerous other dating and gaming apps. When tension between the two nations first escalated in June this year following a violent border clash in Ladakh, India had almost immediately banned 59 Chinese apps, including highly popular social video app Tiktok.
Later in July, India banned an additional 47 apps which were mostly clones of those banned in the first tranche. TikTok’s ban was a huge blow for the Chinese company, losing nearly 200 million users and 30 per cent of its global downloads.
On Wednesday, the Indian government said that it has received many complaints from various sources which included several reports on the misuse of a few mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms. These were used for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India, the Centre said. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre of the Ministry of Home Affairs had also sent an exhaustive recommendation for blocking these malicious apps, the ministry added in the statement.
Tencent loses lucrative mobile gaming market