NEW DELHI -- Originally targeting China's selfie lovers and users of cut-rate, no-frills smartphones, Chinese smartphone apps are gaining popularity in overseas emerging markets such as India.

Meitu's image-enhancing apps, including its popular BeautyPlus, is used by 1.2 billion users worldwide, of which 500 million are outside China, according to the company. The app allows users to digitally brighten skin color and sharpen body parts. Last year in India, it was the most trending app on Google Play, Google's app store. A 21-year-old university student said she has been using it every day since learning about it.

Selfies are as wildly popular in India as in China, a fact not lost on smartphone makers, which use their camera's selfie capabilities to drive sales.

A study by Carnegie Mellon University and others found that shooting selfies is so popular in India that there are a significant number of accidental deaths due to careless users.

Many people doctor photos with BeautyPlus before uploading them to social media. The app recognizes 171 data points on a face, such as the edge of an eye or the peak of the nose, allowing more nuanced changes than with similar apps that can only recognize 100 or so data points.

Meitu has released a different version of the app designed for easy use on smartphones with limited storage. Ravish Jain, Meitu's country manager for India, said the app is particularly well-suited to Indians, whose skin colors vary.

Affordable smartphones with limited storage or slow processors are common in emerging countries. Clean Master, an app developed by Cheetah Mobile, a unit of China's Kingsoft, deletes unnecessary files on smartphones to improve performance. The app has been downloaded 700 million times so far.

According to App Annie, an American market research outfit, Clean Master was downloaded nearly 20 million times each in India, Brazil and the U.S. last year. Cheetah Mobile has also cut deals with more than 100 smartphone makers to pre-install the app on many of their phones.

David Wu, chairman of Cheetah Mobile's Taiwanese unit, which is responsible for Clean Master's overseas marketing, said that while over 90% of the 900 million people on the WeChat messaging app are Chinese, 80% of Clean Master users are non-Chinese.

Sungy Mobile's popular Go Launcher app allows users to configure their smartphone screens, to change, for example, background images every day. Since its debut in 2010, the app has been downloaded close to 500 million times. It is available in 48 languages and used in over 200 countries and territories. It is especially popular in India, the U.S. and the Philippines, the company said.

Chinese smartphone users number 660 million, accounting for about 30% of the worldwide total, according to Newzoo, a Dutch research company. The country's developers seem intent on catering to demands in their massive, home market.

Perhaps, unlike their Silicon Valley rivals, which focus on pursuing innovative technology, Chinese companies are growing competitive in a different way.