Using your app in China? Hardly anyone knows about the troublesome process until release - we do it for our customers.

Let's assume: a manufacturer of industrial machines needs a mobile app to operate his assembly robots. Sure, he commissions us to develop the app - no problem. How does our customer's app reach the machine’s operator? Through the app stores, of course.

First things first: how do we get the app? We simply download the app from the official Apple App Store or the Google Play Store – there we go. But is it always that simple? In fact, downloading an app can be a bit more complicated than our first assumption may lead us to believe.

Users are only able to see – therefore download - apps from the app store for the country they have registered for. This hardly seems to be a problem for users in Europe or the US, that is, both regions have app stores with strong market shares and – when it comes down to releasing an app - relatively few restrictions.

Though, the same can not be said about China. Many apps that are well known to users in Europe and the US are not offered in the Land of the Rising Sun. That instances may be caused by China’s political bans that apply to distribution of digital goods or by the additional expenses for the app developer.

This challenge in mind, we now must answer two main questions: 

• How to get the manufacturer’s app to China?

•           How do people get the app on their devices?

Answering the first question seems rather easy: the app can be activated for all countries, including China/China Mainland and Hongkong in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. However, it remains uncertain whether the app can be downloaded by the Chinese resident eventually – which leads us to the latter question.

Accessing the Google Play Store from China can be a hustle. More often than not, users are confronted with denied access while their IP address is blocked from connecting to the store.  Furthermore, the Google Play Store is subjected to many restrictions and limitations in China. Unimaginable for western users of the store: Chinese authorities keep disclosed lists of apps that are either approved or unallowed to be downloaded by Chinese citizens. Additionally, trading zones with foreign representatives enjoy advantages over other regions. For all this, you also need a device that is registered in the Chinese app stores.

There are three main approaches to circumvent the problem:

• Secondary devices linked to a western app store account are used. The problem here: you can't use the device to load exclusive apps for domestic use.
• The second approach to access the app store is to make use of a VPN tunnel to the west, which disguises the actual location of the user by re-routing the internet traffic through different nodes. Although this workaround works most of the time, the legal consequences for Chinese citizens are yet to be answered.
• Finally, although only applicable to the Android operating System, users can make use of a plethora of alternative app stores that co-exist besides the official Google Play Store. For example, one of these alternatives is already well-known to us: the Amazon Appstore. As of today, China’s leading alternative store is the HUAWEIAppGallery with 530 million active users, followed by Tencent with 270 million active users. Oppostore now ranks third with 125 million active users in China.

Though, getting into these Chinese Google Play Store alternatives requires some actions from developers which, in turn, can be a hurdle for foreign companies: they have to register and to set up additional, dedicated accounts for each of these platforms. Publishing an app in these alternative stores are usually more difficult than using Google’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store due to the lack of user guidance, accessibility or consistent workflows – that’s why we are happy to help you out as we can take care of all the necessary steps.

“But hey, there’s still another way,” you might think. Surely you are right about that assumption but let’s talk about it: On Android, you can install apps directly to your device without any need of a store whatsoever. You can distribute the application via mail or download it from a server and install it on your device.

Yet, although handy, the direct install should be the last resort and comes with its own caveats: you easily lose control over installed app versions, several other statistics, and cannot make sure that every user’s app is up-to-date. Also, distributing apps in form of installable files might harm your reputation, since doing so is not considered to be the “professional way”.  Last but not least: when distributed via installable files, it is hard to impossible to ensure that your app has not been tinkered with by a third person. Someone could have altered the code without your knowledge, or worse, injected viruses or other malicious functions - that's what the app stores are for, offering them a valid distribution system.

18.08.2023

Photo by Declan Sun on Unsplash