Apple and Google May Drop TikTok App

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Dec 16, 6:55AM EST · Published Dec 15, 12:33PM EST

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Apple and Google May Drop TikTok App — © 196862908@N04 / Flickr

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

After Congress and President Biden passed legislation to ban TikTok, an appeals court supported the decision. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) and Google may have to remove the TikTok app from their app stores. A recent letter telling the two tech giants to do so came from the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. The committee’s two leaders, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) signed it.

24/7 Wall St. Key Points:

A recent letter from Congress asked Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google to remove the TikTok app from their app stores.
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In the letters to Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, and Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, which Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) owns, the committee wrote: “Under U.S. law, [Apple and Google] must take the necessary steps to ensure it can fully comply with this requirement by January 19, 2025.” That is the deadline Congress set for TikTok to stop operating in the United States. They reminded TikTok that it was given a year to either shutter its operation in the United States or sell TikTok to an American company.

In another letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew, the committee wrote, “Congress has acted decisively to defend the national security of the United States and protect TikTok’s American users from the Chinese Communist Party.” Members of Congress have charged TikTok with using its app to spy on its U.S. users.

People who have already downloaded the app can use it, but TikTok can no longer support it, which means it eventually will not work.

One wrinkle to the enforceability of the letters is that the incoming president may work to reverse the ban.

TikTok has 170 million users in the United States, meaning it has about the same number of users as Instagram. TikTok parent ByteDance was recently valued at $300 billion. It is unclear how much of that is due to TikTok’s U.S. valuation.

ByteDance says it will not sell TikTok, but it may not have an option next month.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.