China-Made Camera360 App Snaps Its Way to 100 Million Global Users

One of the most popular Chinese-made apps around the world is Camera360, the photo filter app made by a startup team in Sichuan province. Today the crew has revealed that Camera360 has 100 million global users across its three versions for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. Of that number, the startup tells us that 30 million of them are active monthly users.

The major milestone comes almost exactly a year after Pinguo, the makers of Camera360, received nearly $10 million in funding. At that time, it had 30 million users across its three mobile apps, Camera360, Photo360, and Movie360.

In the intervening year, Camera360 – which doesn’t have an Instagram-like social element – added its Cloud Albums feature to allow easy photo back-ups. While optional, the team has already seen more than 240 million photos uploaded into Cloud Albums.

Camera360 has also built a platform on its popular photo filters in the past few months, and that SDK is now available for free to other developers. The SDK has been used to put filters into apps made by major web companies like Tencent, Renren, and Kaixin. Camera360 is now in talks with a number of smartphone manufacturers to have its filters preinstalled in some new phones.

Of course, Camera360 is up against a lot of competition in this niche. We recently rounded up 25 Asia-made photo apps, which is a list worth seeing.