TikTok, a burgeoning Chinese video-sharing app, is facing a new set of obstacles that continue to grow outside of its comfort zone.
Lawmakers have recently called for an investigation into the social network operated by Beijing-based internet upstart ByteDance over concerns that it might censor politically sensitive content and be forced to pass data on to the Chinese government from American users.
TikTok was likely the first Chinese smartphone device to touch the global level: by February it had more than 1 billion downloads.
This is achieved with a creative community that is great at churning out snappy, light-hearted clips, highly localized operations and its buyout of competitor Musical.ly, which has taken American teenagers by storm.
WeChat, on the other hand, has struggled to build up a significant overseas presence and the fintech affiliate of Alibaba, Ant Financial, has mostly gone abroad through smart investments.
In a statement last week, TikTok denied allegations of American senators, saying that they store their U.S. user data internally and backup protection in Singapore and that none of their data is subject to Chinese law.
The new media company must have seen the heat coming as U.S.-China tensions escalate in recent times. In the long term, TikTok might have better luck expanding in developing countries along China's Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing's ambitious global infrastructure and investment strategy.
The app already has a footprint in some 150 countries with a concentration in Asia. India accounted for 45 percent of its total downloads as of September, followed by the U.S. at 8 percent, according to data analytics firm Sensor Tower.
The other Chinese company that took the heat all over the world seems to be faring better. According to market analytics firm Canalys, Huawei clung to second place in global smartphone shipments in the third quarter and recorded the highest annual growth out of the top 5 players at 29 percent.
Samsung, who was in the first spot, rose 12 percent. Apple fell by 7 percent in third place. Despite a U.S. ban on using the Android operating system from Huawei, third-quarter shipments from the phone maker consisted predominantly of models already under development before the introduction of the restriction, Canalys said.
Another interesting Huawei handset news snippet is that it is partnered with a Beijing-based startup called ACRCloud to add audio recognition capabilities to its native music app.
It is a sign that not only is the company building products, but software development has also been improved.
Huawei Music has a digital licensing deal with the music arm of Tencent and boasts over 150 million active monthly users, including free and paid subscribers.
