Being among the top 10 downloaded and actively used social media platforms based in China, TikTok huge customer data has attracted America’s attention at a time of a trade war with China.
Less than a month after President Donald Trump issued a directive for ByteDance to sell its TikTok U.S. business within 90 days or face being shut down, the bidding drama is quickly unfolding. According to social media analysts, one thing remains in common for the bidders, the vast customer data accumulated by hundreds of millions of TikTok downloads over the past years.
Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) is emerging to be the likely winner even though Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is working round the clock to win ByteDance favor.
In the bigger picture, the Americans need to cut short China’s control over global technology, and by dividing TikTok seems the best smooth alternative.
Oracle Preferred Buyer for TikTok
Although the U.S. Treasury is set to financially benefit from the sale of TikTok, there seems to be a preferred choice for Donald Trump to acquire the business.
With Oracle CEO Larry Ellison being actively involved in the re-election campaigns for the sitting President, analysts predict Oracle might be the preferred buyer.
However, ByteDance will be the overall decision-maker on who to sell its product to. Preferably, one that will offer the best cash deal, which both Oracle and Microsoft are capable of anyway, or one that will not pose a direct competition threat in future for its venture, where Oracle highly wins.
“The perfect company for Bytedance to sell to is one with deep enough pockets to pay a good price,” said Matthew Brennan, a social media analyst in Beijing.
Brennan added that the buyer should be “good enough at tech to actually run all the advanced AI (artificial intelligence that TikTok has)” but weak enough at consumer mobile that they would avoid arming a future competitor. “By these measures, Oracle sounds like a good fit,” said Brennan.
Oracle is actively providing the CIA with its database software solution, and the acquisition of China’s huge tech company might be a gateway to spying the Chinese market.
In addition, Oracle’s acquisition of TikTok will be a plus for the struggling company to venture into new markets and presumably the social media industry.
“Sure there seem like obvious wins with access to data and cloud solutions but probably no one in the senior team of Oracle ever thought of TikTok or cared about it so this rumour has little commercial sense behind it,” said Timothy Armoo, the CEO of Fanbytes. “Serving massively different demographics and cultures, I think there’s no real substance to it.”
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