Didi app removed from app stores in China after suspension orders

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has ordered app stores to remove Didi Chuxing’s app, as tension seems to rise between the nation’s largest ride-hailing giant and local regulators. The CAC claims that the company has illegally collected users’ personal data. The regulator said it had requested the organization to make updates to place it in consistency with China’s data protection rules, yet didn’t expand on what the infringement may have included.

The ride-hailing giant, which counts Apple, SoftBank, and Tencent, and Uber among its investors and filed for an IPO late last month, the biggest IPO of a Chinese company on a US stock exchange since Alibaba in 2014. On Friday, the CAC declared new client enlistments for Didi’s administration were being suspended forthcoming a “cybersecurity review.”

In response, a Didi spokesperson stated that Didi has removed its app from various app stores including Apple’s App Store, and has begun with “corrections”. It likewise said it had stopped new user registration on Saturday. For existing clients, the Didi application stays functional.

It’s uncommon for an application of this scale to be pulled from the application stores. The app had 156 million monthly users in Q1, well above Uber’s 98 million in the period. For the year finished March, Didi served 493 million yearly active clients and saw 41 million transactions daily, it uncovered as of late.