India trails only China, which had 1.5 million infected devices last year. Other countries with high infection rates included Indonesia (8,00,327 devices), Russia (4,63,385), Malaysia, Mexico, the US (3,22,833), Vietnam, the Philippines and Iran.
"In 2015, China, India and Indonesia were the three-most severely-afflicted countries. Apart from large Android user bases, another reason of these countries becoming the worst-hit ones is that third-party app markets are prevailing in these areas, many of which have been contaminated by malwares due to weak monitoring," the company said.
The report is cumulative data based on 567 million global monthly active users and an overall install base of almost two billion users using Cheetah Mobile's applications on their devices.
Also, the number of Android viruses rose sharply, exceeding 9.5 million. This is larger than twice the total number in the past three years, the report said, adding that compared with 2014 (2.8 million), the year-on-year growth is over 22 per cent.
Also Read
In 2015, Cheetah Mobile detected over 13,00,000 malicious websites. The number of malicious sites increased month on month, reaching its peak in December.
About the year ahead, the report said Google Play's (Google's app store) availability in China market and Chinese app markets are expected to become more standardised and secure.
"Google Play has a much more secure ecosystem with its strict monitoring system. It is set to enter the Chinese market and will bring a more transparent, standardised and healthy application distribution channel to help create a healthy environment for the Chinese Android ecosystem," the report said.