“Five eye alliance” meets US media: Microsoft also intends to acquire tiktok UK business

The appetite seems to be growing. The U.S. technology giant is targeting UK business after it includes tiktok’s us, New Zealand, Australia and Canada businesses. According to Fox News Business Channel on the 17th, a banker revealed that Microsoft is currently interested in buying tiktok’s UK business. < / P > < p > the person familiar with the matter said it was not clear whether the parent company of tiktok, byte hop, was willing to sell the app’s UK business or whether Microsoft had made a formal offer for the acquisition. < p > < p > in early August, when US President trump offered to ban tiktok without selling, Microsoft has become the main potential seller of tiktok. On August 1, a person familiar with the matter told Fox News that the initial negotiations between Microsoft and tiktok were mainly focused on the U.S. business. But Microsoft’s “ambition” may be even bigger, focusing on this broader international market with hundreds of millions of users around the world. Sure enough, Microsoft said in an official statement Tuesday that the company’s acquisition scope also includes tiktok’s businesses in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In this regard, the Daily Telegraph of the United Kingdom has given three possible reasons: Britain’s review standard of tiktok is not as “strict” as that of the United States; the British government hopes to take this action to repair Sino British Relations; and the United States “deliberately ignores” Britain. < / P > < p > moreover, the UK government said in early August that it had no plans to ban the tiktok platform in the UK. The British government has given tiktok a “green light”, and the news that tiktok is considering moving its international headquarters to London has also been widely reported in the media. If the international headquarters is successfully relocated to the UK, tiktok’s staff in London may be expanded from 800 to 3000. The relevant person in charge of tiktok said, “we are really exploring the possibility of setting up tiktok headquarters outside the United States.”. However, there appears to be no progress on the relocation of tiktok headquarters to the UK. On the other hand, US media reported that tiktok announced that it would spend $500 million to build the first European data center in Ireland. < / P > < p > in fact, tiktok itself is digging deep into the UK market. According to emarketer, a market research firm, in February this year, tiktok has about 4.82 million active users in the UK, which is expected to grow to 8.12 million by the end of this year and exceed 10 million by the end of 2021. In addition, according to sensor tower, a mobile application data analysis company, the annual revenue of tiktok in 2019 is about 177 million US dollars (about 1.236 billion yuan, excluding China’s non IOS part). The contribution of the UK region ranked third, with us $2.4 million, second only to China and the United States.