According to the mobile analytics company SensorTower, the sharp increase in WeChat downloads in the US helped the app climb to No. 100 in the US on September 18. Before that, WeChat ranked between 1,000 and 1,500. This is the first time this application has entered the top 500 in the US. September 18 was the biggest download date in the last two years for this app, since October 7, 2019. SensorTower data showed 10,000 installations in the US as of September 17, up 150% from a day earlier and up 233% from the previous week.
TikTok also had a sharp increase in downloads on September 18 when it had 247,000 new installs, up 12% from a day earlier. This app ranks 4th on AppStore and is consistently in the top 15 most installed apps on iOS in 2020 in the US.
The new US government banned Tencent’s WeChat and Bytedance’s Tiktok on June 18 citing national security concerns. The bans will go into effect on September 20. After that, smartphone users in the US won’t be able to download or update these two apps. Users who already have WeChat in hand-held devices may have difficulty using them, as the app is slow, bugs because US Internet services will not be available from September 20.
As for TikTok, the “parent” company ByteDance is negotiating to hand over control of the application’s US user data to Oracle, in response to concerns of US authorities about data from users. fell into the hands of the Chinese government. TikTok can still do business with American companies until November 12, 10 days after the presidential election.
Chinese officials, who will have to approve TikTok’s final deal, call the US action to ban the two apps as economic bullying. Yesterday (September 19), the Chinese government introduced the process of “list of untrusted entities”, companies on this list will not be able to do business in China. While it hasn’t been mentioned which companies will be on the list, if US-China relations continue to deteriorate, big companies like Apple and Google will be included on the list first.