TikTok still the world’s most popular entertainment app with 80 million downloads in May, a 35 per cent jump
- TikTok installs surpassed 80 million downloads last month, a 35 per cent increase over April, but down from a peak of 112 million the same month last year
- Political turmoil continues to plague the ByteDance-owned short-video app in the US, and it remains banned in India
However, downloads of the viral short-video app were down 29 per cent year on year, falling short of its record 112 million downloads last May. In June of last year, the app was banned in India, its top overseas market at the time.
The man who turned ByteDance and TikTok into a global sensation
The US was TikTok’s second-largest market from December to March, but it fell out of the top two in April, according to Sensor Tower.
TikTok has been facing a political backlash in the US since last summer, when then-president Donald Trump threatened to ban the app unless ByteDance divested its American operations, which Oracle and Walmart had plans to acquire.
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Global expansion of TikTok and other Chinese tech companies is likely, only not in the West
When ByteDance first hired Chew as CFO in March, it was seen as the company getting closer to a public listing. While CFO and international business president of Xiaomi, Chew oversaw the smartphone giant’s IPO in Hong Kong in 2018.
Before Xiaomi, Chew worked for DST Global, where he helped the venture firm invest in ByteDance in 2013.