Apple may compete with Microsoft for TikTok - Axios

Not only Microsoft, but also Apple is interested in buying the Chinese TikTok app, say Axios sources . The company itself denied this.

In addition to Microsoft, which has already confirmed talks to buy TikTok, Apple and at least one other strategic investor are interested in the app, writes Axios.

It would be an unusual deal for Apple, given that TikTok is a cross-platform application, and in addition, such a purchase would be a serious political headache for Apple CEO Tim Cook, both in the US and in China, the publication notes. An Apple spokesman later said that the company denies this information - there is no talk of buying TikTok, and the company is not interested in the deal.

Buying TikTok could be Apple's biggest acquisition ever. Its biggest purchase to date was a $3 billion takeover of headphone maker Beats Electronics. Investors in China's ByteDance, which owns the TikTok service, valued it for a $50 billion buyout, Reuters reported in late July.

A real drama is unfolding around TikTok in the US. On July 31, Donald Trump told reporters that he allowed Tik Tok to be blocked in the United States. Authorities fear that the Chinese app will be used to collect personal data from US citizens, he explained.

Following this, several business publications at once reported that Microsoft is interested in buying an extremely popular application in the US . The corporation later confirmed these reports.

Trump yesterday demanded that the app be sold to Microsoft or another company by September 15 or TikTok would “go out of business” and be blocked in the US. And today, the president announced another condition - the American buyer - be it Microsoft or someone else - must not only buy TikTok, but also transfer to the US treasury a "significant amount of money" from the deal. “The US Treasury should receive a very significant percentage of this amount because we made this deal possible,” Trump told Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

In the American media and business community, this position of the US President has already caused a storm of indignation. “The fact that the president is offering the federal authorities to profit from a business deal that he himself has pushed is absolutely unheard of. And also, most likely, illegal and unethical, ” said , for example, WSJ law professor at the University of Richmond, Carl Tobias.