Apple might be forced to remove WeChat from stores

Aug 14, 2020 06:08 GMT  ·  By

United States President Donald Trump has recently announced a new ban aimed at a Chinese company, and this time the decision could have serious consequences for Apple.

WeChat, the app that everybody uses in China, could be the target of a new series of sanctions, with President Trump planning to forbid its parent company from doing any business with American firms.

What this means is that Apple would no longer be allowed to offer WeChat in the App Store, and this would technically lead to the full banning of the app.

The question is where this ban is supposed to happen, as a global removal of WeChat from the App Store could have a catastrophic effect on Apple. Especially in China, that is, as most users in the country do run WeChat on a daily basis.

Local or global ban?

And a Weibo survey shows just how important WeChat is for Chinese users. No less than 95 percent of the respondents said they are ready to abandon iPhones if WeChat can no longer be installed on Apple’s devices, with many believing that these smartphones would pretty much be useless in such a case.

Earlier this month, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo projected a decline of up to 30 percent in global sales for the Cupertino-based tech giant if it’s forced to remove WeChat everywhere.

And this is actually the thing that the United States Commerce Department needs to clarify, as everybody’s wondering right now if the WeChat ban is supposed to take place only in America or also in global markets.

Kuo says that a WeChat ban in the U.S. would have just a small impact of around 3 to 6 percent for Apple sales. Meanwhile, plenty of American companies, including Apple, Disney, and even Ford, joined forces to require President Donald Trump to cancel the banning of the Chinese app.