New Delhi: A mobile application is doing the rounds on Google Play Store which is developed to assist smartphone users in identifying Chinese applications. The app has already crossed the five million downloads mark in about 15 days of its release activity.
It is created by a Jaipur based company called OneTouch AppLabs. It is called ‘Remove China Apps’ and was launched for downloading on Google play Store on May 17th.
This application gained popularity because of the prevailing current tense situation between India and China in the Ladakh border. The scenario has raged Indian activists to call a declaration and encouragement to boycott products of Chinese origin.
The #BoycottChineseProducts drive received a major advancement after educator and innovator Sonam Wangchuk shared a video on YouTube last week advising people to avoid Chinese goods.
The now-infamous app ‘Remove China Apps’ is ranked the top first amongst the free apps available on Google Play.
OneTouch AppLabs said this application is for “educational purposes only to identify the country of origin of a certain application(s)” and that it does not “promote or force people to uninstall any of the application(s).”
While it has managed to reach an average of 4.9-star from reviewers, some of the users have posted about the features it lacks.
“… I just wanted to give a suggestion for just a little feature, i.e., also tell us about the alternatives for that particular app. For example, Xender and Share it are being used by a lot of people for transfer of files, and those apps are good. But if not those apps, then what to use as an alternative…??? Hope you consider this in next update,” wrote one user in the review section.
Another user commented saying, “I was about to give one star but went with two as the motive behind the app is good. The reason behind poor rating is that it is not able to detect Chinese vendor’s apps, which is what it is supposed to do. Tried installing Chinese apps such as ‘China travel’ but scanner failed to identify. Could be a database issue but it has to be figured out by developers and be worked upon constantly. If you want to beat Chinese on this front, work on expanding the database. Will wait for bugs to be fixed.”
The domain site ‘Whois’ has said that this application’s official website had been developed on May 8th, which suggests at the possibility of the person behind it creating the website wholly and solely to launch the app on the Google Play Store.
