DeepSeek Tops Free App Charts Both in the US and China Apple Stores (19459000)
The large model storm sparked by DeepSeek has been increasing in both China as well as the United States.
DeepSeek topped the Apple App Store free list for China on January 27th. DeepSeek jumped from sixth to first on the Apple App Store’s free list in the US. It surpassed ChatGPT, the social media platform Threads, owned by Meta company, and generative AI products developed by American tech companies such as Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini.
This is the first time a Chinese application has been able occupy the top spot simultaneously in both the Chinese and US Apple App Stores. Xiaohongshu, and Temu had previously become the top downloads in US App Stores but failed to achieve top rankings simultaneously in China.
Yesterday, DeepSeek suffered a short-term crash. DeepSeek responded by stating that there was a local service fluctuation during the afternoon but the issue was resolved in minutes. This incident could have been caused due to a surge in traffic after the release a new model. The servers were temporarily unable meet the high concurrency requirements of users.
The application was developed by DeepSeek, a domestic large-scale model manufacturer (affiliated to the quantitative giant High-Flyer Quant). The inference large model DeepSeek R1 gained attention quickly after its release because of its high performance and low-cost advantages.
DeepSeek R1 is an open-source model that performs very close to OpenAI GPT-4o on tasks involving mathematical, code and natural language reasoning. The training costs are only a tenth of those of GPT-4o (approximately $5,576,500,000). Jim Fan, an NVIDIA scientist, has praised the innovative nature of its reinforcement learning-driven method.
This model is highly praised by the overseas developer community for its support of commercial use and derivative developments. It also ranks among the top in assessments such as Chatbot arena.
DeepSeek’s simultaneous top-ranking in both the US Apple App Store and the China Apple App Store is a significant milestone for Chinese AI applications on the international market. Zhou Hongyi’s assessment of DeepSeek is’simply incredible’.
This event is of great importance to DeepSeek and the industry. This is the first time Chinese AI products have been downloaded more than leading American products such as ChatGPT on mainstream overseas markets. It also challenges the traditional business model, where large companies rely heavily on capital investment. DeepSeek’s success may also boost confidence in large models developed domestically within China, or increase capital flow to domestic AI technology. Its open source strategy (such releasing six small models) should promote collaboration among China’s AI developer communities.
Microsoft CEO Nadella, and Meta engineers stated on anonymous forums that DeepSeek’s low-cost, high-efficiency model forced American companies to reevaluate research and development strategies. Meta was said to be’reverse-engineering’ its technology urgently. This could accelerate the shift of American companies from closed-source models to more collaborative, open-source models.
DeepSeek is currently facing multiple challenges, including those related to geopolitics and technological paths. It also faces issues with business sustainability. DeepSeek’s next steps will be determined by whether it can maintain its technological advantage and withstand pressures from all directions once the novelty of its users fades.
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