Google and Apple restored TikTok to their respective app stores on Thursday, nearly a month after they were removed. Other apps like Capcut, and Lemon8, all owned by ByteDance–TikTok’s parent company–which were removed alongside TikTok were also restored.
The apps were removed from the app stores following a ban on TikTok in the U.S., citing national security concerns. The U.S. supreme court had voted in favour of the ban in early January, and the app had gone dark on Jan. 19 for American users, only for it to become accessible again in less than 24 hours. However, the mega-popular social media app remained unavailable in app stores for much longer.
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order to temporarily halt the ban on TikTok, on the condition that a new buyer is found within 75 days. This makes the future of the platform uncertain as the platform has refused to sell to any buyers in the U.S.
Trump has suggested that the U.S. could own a 50% share in TikTok through a joint venture with other tech companies as an alternative to the ban. Alongside signing an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund, he suggested the fund could be used to purchase TikTok’s U.S. operations.
Oracle and Microsoft are said to be in the running to buy the app. There was some talk of Elon Musk possibly buying the app, however he put those speculations to rest by saying he was not interested, and prefers “building companies from scratch rather than acquiring them,” and that his acquisition of Twitter (now X) was an exception.
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Rival social media platforms have tried to bank on the uncertainty surrounding TikTok, with X and BlueSky launching dedicated vertical video fields, Meta offering bonuses and other incentives to lure TikTok creators.
According to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower, TikTok was the second most downloaded app in the U.S. last year, with 52 million downloads.