The government of Donald Trump continues with its particular crusade against China. The COVID-19 pandemic originating in the Asian country has only fueled the anger of the North American president and recently announced possible new restrictions that would fully affect Apple and ordinary users around the world, not just the Chinese . This has to do with the elimination of TikTok and WeChat, two apps that have this country as their origin and that could leave the iPhone App Store.
IPhone sales estimates if apps are removed
Beyond politics, China is a priority market for many technology companies like Apple and not only because it is a good place to establish factories, but also because of the large numbers that the inhabitants of this country contribute in the quarterly profit figures. In fact, a large part of the crisis suffered by the Californian company at the beginning of 2019 was mainly due to a slowdown in iPhone sales in this territory. Having this clear, we can understand that any decision that affects this country could directly or indirectly harm the firm led by Tim Cook.
Donald Trump asked to remove TikTok and WeChat from the United States App Store, but it is not entirely clear if Apple will finally comply with this requirement and if it will do so worldwide. In the event of the latter happening, the losses would be around 30% , data provided by the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and which does not make it clear whether it refers to losses generated by iPhone sales or in total. In any case, they are very pessimistic figures and that have their reason for being that WeChat is the most popular messaging app for iPhone there.
Saving the many existing distances, this case is somewhat similar to what happens to Huawei in Europe. This manufacturer has a veto in place whereby it cannot launch new phones with Google services, which includes its application store. For many European users, it is difficult to acquire a phone that, no matter how good, will not easily install apps as used as WhatsApp, this being something similar to what will happen to the Chinese with WeChat. However, in this case there would be a difference and that is that in iOS it is not possible to install third-party apps that do not come from the App Store, as opposed to that in Android, if you can download content outside the Play Store.
We will have to continue waiting for new events, since it is too sensitive and complex a subject to predict exactly what will happen. In any case, it should be noted that the aforementioned applications are still available and fully functional in the App Store around the world.