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China’s TikTok, Kwai and Tencent Video are among the biggest apps of the decade
At 2 years old, TikTok has more app downloads than YouTube and Twitter, according to App Annie
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Just 10 years ago, few people were watching online videos in the palm of their hands. But now, at the end of the decade, mobile video apps are an indispensable part of modern life for many. And some of the biggest such apps of the decade came from China.
An App Annie report ranking some of the world’s biggest apps over the last 10 years by downloads and consumer spending shows some obvious and not-so-obvious contenders from China. Here are China’s biggest winners.
TikTok
TikTok, made by Beijing-based Bytedance, was only launched in 2017. But in just two years, it’s managed to top YouTube and Twitter among the most downloaded apps this decade, according to App Annie. TikTok comes in at 7th place, but App Annie doesn’t show the download numbers. The app still trails behind Facebook’s army of apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram.
UC Browser
American internet users may not be familiar with UC Browser, but the Chinese-made mobile browser is incredibly popular in Asia. The app’s growth has relied on attracting low-end smartphone users in developing markets thanks to its small app size. In 2017, UC Browser accounted for 51 per cent of India’s mobile browser market and 41 per cent of Indonesia’s mobile browser market, outperforming Google Chrome in both countries, according to the Wall Street Journal.
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, the owner of UC Browser.)
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