China has ordered app store owners to remove Didi's app from their stores, the latest in a series of orders as tensions between the country's largest ride-hailing company and local regulators rise. According to TechCrunch, the software has vanished from many retailers, including Apple's App Store in China.

Didi was illegally collecting consumers' personal data, according to the nation's internet administration, which issued the order on Sunday.

Apple, SoftBank, Tencent, and Uber are among the ride-hailing giant's investors, and it filed for an IPO late last month. It has been asked to make improvements to comply with Chinese data protection standards.

The move comes after the Chinese internet watchdog said earlier this week that it was investigating Didi due to “national security” concerns. Didi raised at least $4 billion in one of the largest U.S. IPOs this week on the New York Stock Exchange.

Didi claimed in a statement that it had deleted its app from several app stores and was working on "corrections." It further stated that new user registrations were halted on Saturday. The Didi app is still available to existing users.

It's extremely uncommon for an app of this magnitude to be removed from the app stores. Didi recently announced that in the 12 months ending in March, it served 493 million yearly active users and saw 41 million daily transactions.

In Q1, the app had 156 million monthly users, far more than Uber's 98 million. According to official data, China had 365 million ride-hailing users in December, implying that Didi had a sizable market share.

(Source: https://techcrunch.com)