So not only TikTok is in trouble, but so as WeChat since US President Trump released an executive order to ban the social app on 7 August 2020. Should the app be banned, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that the iPhone global shipments could decline 25-30%, but why?
So yes, why is that? Well, although not a lot of people in the West use WeChat, it's still one of the biggest social apps around the world because of China and other countries. There are around 1.2 billion active users and if the app is banned globally instead of in the US, there's a good chance that the users could backlash at Apple (although it's not entirely their fault). This is what Kuo wrote in his research note:
"Since WeChat is very critical to Chinese users, integrating communications, payments, e-Commerce, social software, news reading, and productivity functions, we believe that the move will tank iPhone shipments in the Chinese market. We estimate that global iPhone shipments will decline by 25–30%. Global shipments of other Apple hardware products, including AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac, will decline by 15–25%."
On the other hand, Kuo also predicted that if WeChat got banned in the US market only, then the global iPhone shipments could drop by 3-6% whereas the other Apple products could drop less than 3%. By the way, China accounts for over 15% of Apple's total revenue as of June 2020.
WeChat has not made any comment yet to respond to the US Government's decision, nor did Tencent who owns the social app. Would another company have to acquire the app? Would the ban be reverted? We will have to wait and see how it unfolds. Stay tuned for more trending tech news at TechNave.com.
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