LinkedIn announced yesterday that it'd stop its operation in China. It's not that surprising of a move considering LinkedIn's original announcement, back in 2014, highlighted how they won't let the Chinese government muffle users of the platform.
Looks like they had it! LinkedIn's announcement explained that they chose to exit the market instead of continuing the endless fight with the government. It's a bold statement to make and one that could trigger similar actions from other companies and possibly backlash in China.
But what's LinkedIn giving up by leaving?
Not much, just its second-largest country in terms of app downloads...
According to our App Intelligence, in 2021, the top 5 countries in terms of downloads for LinkedIn's iOS app were the U.S., China, Brazil, India, and France. The U.S. is way ahead of the rest, with around 4M estimated downloads, and China with around a million.
Although it's the second-largest country in absolute terms, when we look at the global take, China accounted for 6.6% of downloads on the App Store in 2021. In terms of revenue, the share is even smaller. China accounted for just 1.9% of LinkedIn's in-app revenue on the App Store in 2021, according to our estimates.
So it's not just the Chinese government being more demanding but also that it's simply not worth the effort for such a small share of users.
BTW - I skipped the Android app because Google Play doesn't operate in China, and I wanted to keep things even.
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