Online shopping Temu free app ranked 2nd, Shiin ranked 14th
Video editing apps Capcut and TikTok ranked 4th and 5th respectively
Social Media Lemon 8 has 1 million downloads
CNBC reported on the 29th (local time) that while hitting the Chinese video platform ‘TikTok’ is spreading in the United States, other Chinese apps such as ‘Temu’ and ‘Capcut’ are still very popular.
In the US, ‘Temu’, an ultra-low-cost online shopping app owned by China-based PDD Holdings, is the number two free app on the Apple App Store as of the end of May.
In the App Store rankings, video editing apps ‘Capcut’ and ‘TikTok’, owned by ByteDance, are ranked 4th and 5th, respectively, while another ultra-low-cost online shopping app ‘Sheein’ is ranked 14th.
Social media app ‘Lemon 8’ launched by ByteDance recorded close to 1 million downloads in the US between late March and early April.
TikTok, which has more than 100 million users in the United States, is suspected of providing personal information to the Chinese government because its parent company, ByteDance, is headquartered in China.
As a result, TikTok is under pressure from the political world to exit, but other Chinese apps are still popular among American consumers.
However, unlike TikTok, CNBC said that other apps have relatively fewer US users, so they are not concerned about national security threats.
While TikTok has recorded 415 million downloads since its launch in the US, Capcut has 99 million downloads, Temu has 67 million downloads, and Lemon 8 has recorded 81.2 million downloads.
Also, ecommerce apps are not at greater risk of spreading harmful content and disinformation than social media apps.
“An app with 1,000 or even 1 million users in the United States does not offer the same wide range of cybersecurity threats as an app with 100 million users,” said Lindsay Gorman, a researcher at ASD, an American think tank.
However, he advised, the US would have to think about how to assess the relative risks of Chinese apps given the threat posed by TikTok.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.