Will Chinese Phones Be Banned In India? List Of Top 11 Chinese Smartphones

Will Chinese Phones Be Banned In India? List Of Top 11 Chinese Smartphones

Will Chinese Phones Be Banned In India? List Of Top 11 Chinese Smartphones

The ministry of IT and Electronics has come out with a fresh list of 47 Chinese apps that are banned in the country. The reports suggest that these apps are 'cloned versions' of the 59 apps that were previously banned by the IT ministry in late June. Although it seems rather odd that it took government nearly a month to figure out that there are security risks with the cloned copies as well. Nevertheless, the ban has been extended to cover more apps even as the border tensions between India and China seem to have softened a bit.

So far, the list of these 47 apps is not known. Some reports suggest that the names include TikTok Lite, Helo Lite, SHAREit Lite and others who have infringed the Section 69A of the IT Act.

Sajai Singh, partner at law firm J. Sagar Associates said that as Indian use of smartphones heads towards 442 million in 2022, with wide availability of cheap data plans, India is recognising the risk to personal data of its citizens. "In China, many large companies, including telecom, OTT and others, are closely linked with the state. This obviously raises red flags for nations when it comes to data of its citizens," he said after today's ban. Singh also said that the time will only tell whether India was the first mover or the only country taking such a decision.

In comparison, companies like Xiaomi, Huawei, Vivo, and others have a significant presence in India in every sense. Take Xiaomi, for instance. The Beijing-headquartered company controls 30.9 per cent of the $8-billion smartphones market. In fact, Chinese smartphone makers together controlled three-fourth of the total Indian smartphones market in the June quarter, as per Canalys. While the overall smartphones market has shrunk in this quarter, the share of Chinese brands has only gone up - from 66.1 per cent in Q2 of 2019 to 75 per cent in Q2 of 2020.

This is quite sobering especially since in this period, the anti-China rhetoric has grown stronger. Let alone their market shares and revenues/profits, as per some estimates, the advertising budgets (over Rs 2,500 crore) of Chinese smartphone makers such as Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and OnePlus are far bigger than the earnings of all banned apps.

List of Top 11 Chinese Smartphone brands in India

1. OnePlus Mobiles
2. Xiaomi / Mi
3. Lenovo
4. Oppo smartphones
5. Vivo
6. Realme
7. Huawei
8. Coolpad
9. Gionee smartphones
10. Zopo
11. ZTE

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