Zapya (

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

: 快牙；

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally writte ...

: kuai ya) is a peer-to-peer file sharing application that allows users to transfer files of any size and of any format without the need of an Internet connection. Dewmobile, Inc. initially conceived Kuai Ya in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...

, California, USA to target the Chinese market in 2012. However, the demand for the application spread to neighboring countries such as

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

and

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

. When the international user base had grown to a reasonable size, Dewmobile created a separate application known as Zapya to publish on

Apple App Store The App Store is an app store platform, developed and maintained by Apple Inc., for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS Software Devel ...

and

Google Play Store Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating syst ...

. While Kuai Ya and Zapya are similar to each other, they include different APK and features in order to comply with

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating sy ...

Policies. Zapya gained popularity in countries with low Internet penetration and poor Internet architecture because it allows users to share files without relying on an Internet or cellular data connection. The application is available on multiple platforms, including lower-end phone models, so that it is accessible to everyone. Users can transfer files of any kind and any size for free using a transfer method similar to

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

and

AirDrop An airdrop is a type of airlift in which items including weapons, equipment, humanitarian aid or leaflets are delivered by military or civilian aircraft without their landing. Developed during World War II to resupply otherwise inaccessible tr ...

. Some cellphone stores use Zapya's "Phone Replicate" feature to transfer the data from their customers' old phones to their new ones.

Impact

Zapya has become ingrained in Cuban youth culture due to limited

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

access in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

. The Miami Herald reported on 11 July 2015 on how Cuban tech start-ups use Zapya to overcome the lack of internet penetration and poor Internet architecture in

. They also found that the youth of Cuba use Zapya as a free platform to talk to their friends and share funny videos and photos. The popularity of Zapya in

has only grown stronger over the years to the point that Cubans have coined the verb "zapyar" as a slang term to refer to sharing files. Cachivache Media deemed Zapya as "the network for the disconnected" in 2016. Travelers and students planning to study abroad in Cuba are recommended to download Zapya before going to the country.

Controversies

Temporary removal from Google Play Store

For a week in October 2019, Zapya was removed from

and labeled as "harming other applications". It was determined that a third party

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...

(SDK) had been deemed harmful by the

Policy team. Any applications that used this SDK were also deemed harmful. The SDK was promptly removed. Dewmobile issued a formal apology to users on 5 October 2019 and urged them to update to the new version that complied with Google Play Policies.

Provisional ban in China

Even though Kuai Ya complies with Chinese censorship restrictions, both it and Zapya are banned in the Chinese autonomous region of

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

. In November 2019, the leaked

China Cables The China Cables are a collection of secret Chinese government documents from 2017 which were leaked by exiled Uyghurs to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and published on 24 November 2019. The documents include a tele ...

revealed that the Chinese government's mass surveillance and predictive-policing program Integrated Joint Operation Platform (IJOP) had flagged 1.8 million users with Zapya and Kuai Ya on their phones for investigation as part of the crackdown on Uyghur Muslims. It is not known when the ban came into effect but recently, travelers and residents who are found with either application downloaded to their phones are forced to uninstall them. Applications such as

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

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, Instagram are also banned in

References

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External links