Social-Media
WeChat and TikTok see US downloads climb ahead of Trump's administration ban
Messaging app WeChat had the highest one-day download numbers in almost two years on Friday, ahead of the US Commerce Department's ban on new apps scheduled to come into effect tomorrow. Preliminary data from the Sensor Tower analytics tool revealed that Chinese-based WeChat had 10,000 installations in the US on Friday, a 150 per cent rise from Thursday and a 233 per cent week-over-week growth. This is the highest number of WeChat deployments in the United States in a single day since October 7th , 2019.
Video site TikTok, also facing the US ban, saw its downloads rise on Friday as well, adding 247,000 new installs to a 12 percent spike on Thursday, according to Sensor Tower.
TikTok's parent firm, Beijing-based ByteDance, has been in negotiations with US businesses over the last few weeks seeking to set up a new firm, TikTok Global, to resolve the Trump administration's data protection issues. President Trump has called for the closing of US TikTok activities unless it is sold to US companies by 15 September. After initial talks with Microsoft , Oracle and Walmart are the remaining applicants to take part in the new TikTok body.
The US is TikTok's second-largest market outside of China after a ban in India, according to Sensor Tower, with an average of around 7.6 million installs per month from the App Store and Google Play this year alone.
For its part, on Saturday, the Chinese government identified the mechanism for its "unreliable list of organizations" which blacklists companies from doing business with the Chinese market, the Washington Post reported. China did not explicitly name any firms that would be named, although it is generally suspected that Beijing would take measures against big US firms including Apple and Google if US-China ties were to deteriorate.
