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Tiktok parent Bytedance increases sales significantly
According to reports, the Chinese tech group Bytedance and parent company of the Tiktok app closed the year 2022 with a jump in sales. photo
© Damian Dovarganes/AP
The sales of the Chinese tech group made a visible leap upwards at the end of last year. It is unclear what share the short video platform Tiktok has in the jump in sales.
According to media reports, the Chinese parent company of the popular short video app Tiktok closed the past year with a jump in sales. The revenues of the Bytedance group increased by more than 30 percent to over 80 billion dollars (around 74 million euros) in 2022, write the website “The Information” and the financial service Bloomberg. Bytedance named the number in a letter to its investors, Bloomberg reports. Bytedance is not listed on the stock exchange and does not have to publish any business figures.
Exactly how much Tiktok contributed to group sales remains unclear. It is likely to remain a small proportion, while the bulk of the business is generated in the home market. Bytedance operates the separate Chinese Tiktok variant Douyin there. “The Information” pointed out that Tiktok predicted advertising revenue of around ten billion dollars for the year in November, two and a half times as much as in 2021. Tiktok has more than one billion users worldwide.
How strong is China’s influence?
The short video platform is under pressure in the West after warnings that Chinese authorities are spying on users. Tiktok dismisses the suspicions and is courting trust with plans for data storage in the US and Europe, as well as independent oversight. In the US – where Tiktok has more than 150 million users – the model doesn’t seem to cut it. There is increasing discussion about a ban on the app. According to media reports, US authorities are demanding that Chinese shareholders withdraw.
Tiktok emphasizes that it does not see itself as a subsidiary of a Chinese group, since Bytedance is 60 percent owned by western investors and the official company headquarters are on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. Critics counter that the Chinese founders held 20 percent of the control thanks to higher voting rights and that Bytedance has a large headquarters in Beijing.