After the confirmation received by Washington to ban the messaging app, WeChat, there has been a sudden rise in downloads in the United States.
According to data analytics firm Sensor Tower, WeChat, a Chinese tech giant Tencent’s app, was installed 54000 times between Friday and Saturday which is 28 times the 1900 downloads seen in the same two day period a week before. WeCom as well saw an upsurge in the downloads since the announcement.
The U.S. Department of Commerce issued an order wanting Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google to remove WeChat from downloads on account of national security and other issues like trade and managing the coronavirus crisis. On Sunday, the U.S. judge blocked this ban.
Tencent has denied that its apps are a threat to national security. It added that the U.S. users may be impacted if this ban is approved. Tencent said that WeCom is a different product from WeChat but their accounts can be linked to each other.
