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Koreans Embrace Chinese Apps

Over 10 million Koreans or one in five use Chinese smartphone apps.

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According to market researcher Rankey.com on Friday, 10.19 million people in Korea were using one or more of the most popular 15 Chinese apps last month, up 21.7 percent on-year.

"Chinese companies have accumulated technological advances in their domestic market, proved that they are no longer copycats, and emerged as a powerhouse in the global market", said one IT industry insider.

TikTok, a video making and sharing app by China's Bytedance, now has over 1 billion users across the world, 3.2 million of them in Korea, making it the frontrunner here. TikTok produces a 15-second video clip and shares it, and its popularity among teens helped the number of subscribers jump fivefold in just a year.

Online shopping mall AliExpress' app was second with 2.12 million users here, more than double the number a year ago as more and more people embraced cheap electronics from China.

Clean Master, a smartphone optimizer and space cleaner, had 1.52 million users, and Tencent's mobile messenger WeChat and Baidu's photo editing app Photo Wonder 1.47 million and 1.29 million.

Mi Home, an app that allows users to control Xiaomi appliances with a smartphone, has 770,000 users in Korea, and Mi Fit, which keeps track of exercises and sleeping patterns through Xiaomi's smart watch and scale, has 600,000.

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