Google takes aim at China's smartphone market with country-specific app
Its trying to tap one of the biggest smartphone markets in the world with a Chinese version of Files Go, a storage management platform.
Google has launched its second China-specific app in the world's biggest smartphone market.
Google is ramping up its efforts to return to the world's biggest smartphone market.
The search giant launched Wednesday a China-specific version of its storage management platform, Files Go. The app can be downloaded from third-party app stores hosted by Chinese tech mammoths, Baidu, Huawei , Tencent and Xiaomi .
Called "Google Wen Jian Ji Ke" (roughly translated as "Google Files Geeks"), the new tool wants to help users better manage their files and keep devices running efficiently. It recommends items users can delete to free up space and helps users organise and locate files they can share to local devices offline.
This is the second China-specific app from Google, the first being Google Translate, which boasts almost 1.8 million downloads on China's App Store. This comes after Google withdrew its flagship services, including Gmail and Google Search, from the country in 2010. Despite the ban on most Google services, the company's Android operating system is widely used in Chinese phones , including Huawei and Xiaomi.
Among Google's other attempts at returning to China are its opening of an artificial intelligence lab in Beijing, as well as an office in Shenzhen. It has also signed a wide-ranging patent deal with China's biggest tech company, Tencent.
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