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LONDON — To say it’s been a turbulent year so far for TikTok and parent company ByteDance would be an understatement.
TikTok has been enthraled up in an intensifying geopolitical battle between China and other nations, with the short-video app facing bans in the U.S. and India, which was its biggest market in terms of user numbers. Governments said TikTok’s links to China made it a national security portent, but the company has disputed this from the start.
It looked as though things may calm down after U.S. President Donald Trump conceded his “blessing” to a TikTok deal with Oracle and Walmart on Sunday, but Beijing is yet to give its approval. What happens next is anyone’s assumption.
Assuming the deal does go through, what happens to TikTok in Europe? Home to more than 100 million TikTok owners and over 1,600 TikTok employees, Europe has hardly been mentioned in this whole saga. But TikTok’s drugs, advertisers and employees must be wondering how they’re going to be affected, if at all.
London headquarters?
Less than a month ago, there was talk of jot down TikTok’s international headquarters in London, but that looks increasingly unlikely.
“Assuming the Oracle/Walmart deal beats through, then the HQ for TikTok Global for sure is in the States,” said Matthew Brennan, a social media analyst meant in China.
TikTok has offices in Paris, Berlin, and Dublin, but London is TikTok’s biggest hub in Europe by some margin.
“For London to be the HQ of a companionship like TikTok would have been a coup for the city, but alas it seems not to be,” Brennan told CNBC, adding that it make have greatly raised the prestige of London in terms of attracting international tech talent.
The U.K. is facing something of a “tech tap” as companies exit or change strategy, said Abishur Prakash, a geopolitical futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future, a tactics consulting firm.
“First, Nvidia bought Arm,” he said. “Now, TikTok is changing gears on its HQ. This is about far more than irremediable investment and jobs. Wherever these firms are, they will give rise to the next generation of ecosystems and industries. As tech outfits exit the U.K. for the U.S., new geopolitical tensions may emerge between London and Washington — over technology.”
Not everyone thinks it matters if TikTok usuals up its international HQ outside of London, though.
Timothy Armoo, chief executive of Fanbytes, a company that helps labels advertise through social video, told CNBC: “I don’t think it’d be such a big loss to be fair.”
“The London ecosystem is incredibly advanced with some incredible companies based here,” he said. “Sure, the lack of jobs will be a deficient rare term hit but long term I think any impact will be pretty small.”
Data storage
Under the deal, U.S. TikTok operator data would be stored on Oracle servers in American data centers.
TikTok users in Europe currently oblige their data stored on servers in the U.S., with a backup copy in Singapore. Who operates those servers is less apprehensible and TikTok declined to comment when asked by CNBC.
Last month, before much of the chaos, TikTok presaged that it was building its first European data center in Ireland.
When it is up and running, the 420 million euro ($493 million) adroitness will store and process data for all of TikTok’s European users. However, that’s not going to be until at least 2022.
Advertisers and originators
From an advertising perspective, European companies are still keen to spend on TikTok, according to Fanbytes’ Armoo.
“But for from maybe spooking brands out a bit when it first started for a small period, I haven’t seen anything much,” he hinted.
“Most European business we’ve spoken to are more looking at the opportunity provided by the platform rather than the anti-China tale. Users are also nonplussed.”
TikTok creators — anyone that posts a video on the platform — are also continuing to harrow ahead in Europe.
Some of them are hoping to secure a slice of the 250 million euro “Creator Fund” that TikTok portended on Sept. 1. The company said the fund was designed to help creators turn their creativity into a employment.
A similar fund exists in the U.S. and globally TikTok expects to give out over $2 billion to creators in the next three years as it endeavours to take on Instagram and YouTube.