Most foreign apps are alien to Chinese residents in China. But they don’t need them because local companies have developed copycats that often surpass the originals. We look at four of the most successful ones. By Zigor Aldama
Baidu
Baidu is a Chinese multinational technology company specialising in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence, headquartered at the Baidu Campus in Beijing’s Haidian District. It is one of the largest AI and internet companies in the world.
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
Sina Weibo
Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the most popular social media platforms in China. As of Q3 2018, Sina Weibo has over 445 million monthly active users, with surging stocks, advertising sales, revenue and total earnings in the quarter.
Twitter is an American online news and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as “tweets”. Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but on November 7, 2017, this limit was doubled for all languages except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
YouKu
Youku Tudou Inc., doing business as Youku, is a video hosting service based in Beijing, China. It operates as a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited.
Youtube
YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries
Taobao
Taobao is a Chinese online shopping website, headquartered in Hangzhou, and owned by Alibaba. It is the world’s biggest e-commerce website and the seventh most visited website according to Alexa. As of 31 March 2018, Taobao has over 617 million monthly active user
Amazon
Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is a multinational technology company focusing in e-commerce, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence in Seattle, Washington. Amazon is the largest e-commerce marketplace and cloud computing platform in the world as measured by revenue and market capitalization.
For all things mobile, check out the rest of this article in our upcoming special issue on the Mobile Phone (Asian Geographic No.135 Issue 2/2019 ) or you can also check out our past issues here or download a digital copy here
