APUS was not the first Chinese company to march into international internet tools and applications fields, but it was the first one venturing to be all-in.
LI Tao, the CEO and founder of Apus Group was giving a speech. PHOTO: Credit to iyiou.com
Dec 6, as an early and passionate practitioner in internationalization and Belt and Road, APUS Group（麒麟合盛）got praised by CCTV(China Central Television). LI Tao（李涛）, CEO and founder of the company reclaimed Apus is devoted to facilitating more users with better experience of mobile life with APUS System in the interview, according to the company's official WeChat account.
Founded in June 2014, Beijing-based Android application developor APUS targeted at overseas market completely at first. APUS was not the first Chinese company to march into international internet tools fields, but it was the first one venturing to be all-in. One year later, APUS debuted its original browser, which soon recommended by Google Play. Along with other apps in which one improves the performance of a user's phone called APUS booster, APUS collectively had users more than 200 million people at that time, reported by New York Times. Till 2017, APUS has accumulated over 1.2 billion global users in 200+ countries and regions, 69% of whom covering 65 "Belt and Road" countries. Even global people is 7.7 billion, but only around 3 billion of whom are having access to internet actually, according to LI.
How the company grabbed such a huge market share in three years? LI concluded the company's global expansion strategy into three stages in a summit held by iyiou.com. Stage one, China-centered Southern Asian, Southeastern Asian and the middle-east region market, where many people there are getting having access to smartphones due to high growth rates of economies and well-establishing communication infrastructures, just like Chinese people in 2008. Stage two, South America, Brazil, Mexico and Russia, where infrastructures there are well-established, however, users are largely influenced by European and American culture. APUS is still patient about these regions. Stage three, African market, where even with high growth speed, but most countries there are lagged behind due to lack of basic infrastructures.
Among the 1.2 billion users, North American users counted for approximately 6% in 2016, while new users from the region accounted for approximately 9% in global users in 2017. It reflected the company's spiel on simplified and personalized applications did work on these younger users, according to LI.