Apple and Google restored TikTok to their app stores in the U.S. on Thursday, nearly a month after the app was removed due to a national security law. Other apps owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, including the video editor CapCut and social media app Lemon8, were also reinstated.
The U.S. government, citing national security concerns related to ByteDance’s Chinese origins, enacted a law last year under former President Joe Biden. This law mandated ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to a non-Chinese entity by January 19, 2025, or face a ban.
Failure to comply would result in severe financial penalties for app store operators. The Supreme Court upheld this law on January 17 following appeals from ByteDance.
Upon taking office, current President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 20 to delay the TikTok ban for 75 days, allowing ByteDance time to seek a buyer. Following this, TikTok restored its services, while service providers such as Oracle also resumed their operations with the app. However, Apple and Google withheld TikTok’s availability due to uncertainties about the financial penalties associated with the deferred law.
During this period, U.S. users who had uninstalled TikTok were unable to reinstall the app, but users who had it pre-installed could continue using it. Trump mentioned this month that there is “great interest” in TikTok as his administration pursued a deal for its sale, noting that “a lot of people” would be bidding for ownership.
In addition to the potential sale of TikTok, Trump suggested a joint venture where the U.S. could hold a 50% share of the app alongside other tech companies. He also proposed the creation of a sovereign wealth fund which could finance the purchase of TikTok’s U.S. operations, with Oracle and Microsoft considered potential buyers.
Rival social networks have sought to capitalize on the uncertainty surrounding TikTok by launching dedicated vertical video feeds. Meta also announced a video editing app aimed to compete with CapCut. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, TikTok was the second most downloaded app in the U.S. last year, with 52 million downloads.
The removal of TikTok occurred on January 18, just hours before the ban was to take effect, resulting in its unavailability for new downloads until its recent restoration.
Featured image credit: Solen Feyissa/Unsplash
