China to blame in app piracy that costs developers USD 3-4 billion a year globally

Mobile app piracy still happens to remain a grey area for many developers. As per the report, 70 billion installs across alternative app stores and a USD 20 billion revenue forecast includes a 15 to 20 percent share of pirated apps

Moneycontrol News

Mobile app developers and publishers are losing around USD 3 to 4 billion every year all thanks to piracy of their apps across alternative app stores, as per data from Tapcore, a report in the Forbes website states.

Data reveals that up to 14 billion apps installs a year are pirated installs and are completely stolen from their original creators.

Mobile app piracy still happens to remain a grey area for many developers. As per the report, 70 billion installs across alternative app stores and a USD 20 billion revenue forecast comprise of a 15 to 20 percent share of pirated apps.

Worldwide distribution

The hub of app piracy happens to be the third party app stores that exist in China and other countries. The market for private apps is not prominent in North America and Europe, where the primary sources of installing apps remain Google Play Store and the iOS app, which have mostly safe and genuine installations.

There are approximately 200 app stores in China serving the Android phone owners, that are owned by China’s tech ‘trio’ of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (collectively called BAT) and hardware companies such as Xiaomi and Huawei.

In April this year, China had closed 18 live streaming apps for disseminating illegal content.

In January this year, The New York Times reported that Beijing introduced regulations for upcoming app stores to undergo registration and a verification process.

How complicated is App piracy?

Pirate developers download apps from the Google Play Store, set up a monetisation mechanism inside the app by altering its programming and release it across the alternative app stores.

When such a pirated app is downloaded by people, they rake in money for the pirated app creators through the generated ads.

The entire case of privacy in the case of mobile apps is, however, expensive.

What can developers do?

The report suggests several tips for developers offering protection against such cases of privacy –

# Installing a hidden code inside apps that detects whenever it has been pirated and in turn makes it display ads that benefit the original developer

# Regular monitoring of the top 20-30 alternative app stores for pirated versions of the company’s app and issue takedown orders against them