特朗普计划禁止TikTok在美国运营？微软欲出手收购抖音美国业务
有知情人士爆出，微软有意收购TikTok在美业务。如果收购顺利进行，就能化解TikTok在美国的监管风险，微软也可以通过TikTok提供的大量视频来重振其广告业务。
Microsoft could re-energize its advertising business with a huge supply of video if it follows through on acquiring TikTok's U.S. operations from ByteDance.
Microsoft is in deal talks as the U.S. government prepares to force China-based ByteDance to divest its video app TikTok over alleged data security concerns, Reuters reported on Friday, citing a source familiar with the matter.
美国总统特朗普与TikTok“积怨”已久。
7月16日，白宫经济顾问库德洛曾露出风声称，预计TikTok将在组织结构上与其中国母公司字节跳动区分开，作为美国公司独立运营。而后特朗普政府声称担心TikTok会收集美国人的数据，为中国宣传，以及应中国要求审查内容，该公司对此予以否认。
当地时间7月31日，特朗普在其专机“空军一号”上对记者表示，他将禁止TikTok在美国运营：“我们正在关注TikTok，我们可能会禁止TikTok，我们可能正在做一些其他的事情。”
U.S. President Donald Trump said he was planning to ban TikTok as soon as Saturday local time, and announced he would not support any American company interested in acquiring the Chinese short video app.
"As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States," Trump told reporters on Friday on Air Force One, adding he will "sign the document tomorrow."
photo via SensorTower
美国拥有全世界第二大的TikTok用户群。仅在2020年新冠疫情期间，美国境内就增加了4500万新用户。根据Sensor Tower的数据，该应用在应用商店上的下载次数已超过1.65亿次。
As TikTok's second-largest user base, the U.S. has seen an increase of 45 million new users in 2020 alone amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The app has been downloaded more than 165 million times on app stores, according to Sensor Tower data.
TikTok issued a statement Friday saying that, "While we do not comment on rumors or speculation, we are confident in the long-term success of TikTok."
China's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said the Chinese government has always required Chinese enterprises to operate overseas in compliance with laws and regulations, and urged some certain people in the U.S. to abandon prejudice and stop suppressing Chinese enterprises.
在微软143亿的年收入中，大部分来自Windows和Office等软件，以及智能云和Azure（微软旗下云服务平台）带来的业务，在广告方面的表现却并不突出。
广告市场研究公司eMarketer估计，仅在美国，微软旗下LinkedIn的广告收入每年约为20亿美元。但微软本月表示，由于新型冠状病毒大流行促使许多广告商开始削减支出，LinkedIn的广告业绩在今年有所下降。
Microsoft generates the bulk of its 143 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenue by licensing software such as Windows and Office as well as cloud storage and computing tools through its Azure service.
The company, with advertising supported businesses including its Bing search engine, MSN news service and LinkedIn business social network, disclosed this month that its search ads sales grew 1 percent to 7.7 billion U.S. dollars over the last year. But that growth was flat when excluding fees it pays to partner websites and apps.
The ad market research company eMarketer has estimated LinkedIn's ad revenue at about 2 billion U.S. dollars annually in the United States alone. But Microsoft also said this month LinkedIn ads sales have fallen this year as the novel coronavirus pandemic prompted advertisers to pare spending.
在疫情期间，社交媒体用户们花在线上娱乐上的时间大大增加，这种趋势在视频平台上尤为突出，广告商们由此看到了商机。然而，如果没有一个拥有广大受众群体的社交媒体平台，微软很难捕捉到那些流向其他平台的热门视频，而这些视频对于广告商来说极具吸引力。
但微软也不是没有优势。有专家称，目前Facebook和YouTube要面对日益严格的潜在反竞争行为监管，这很可能削弱了他们短期内收购主要竞争对手的能力。但是，微软面临的约束却比较少。
Social media services, including Facebook and Alphabet's YouTube, have seen their sales growth continue during the pandemic as users spend more time entertaining themselves online – particularly with video – and advertisers follow them there.
Without an entertainment service aimed at a broad audience, Microsoft has struggled to capture the increasingly lucrative videos flowing to YouTube, Facebook and more recently TikTok, which widely opened its ad tools this month.
Increased U.S. regulatory scrutiny of potentially anticompetitive behavior by Facebook and YouTube have likely diminished their ability to purchase a major competitor soon, according to antitrust experts. Microsoft, though, faces fewer constraints.
"Its consumer strategy remains in flux and an aggressive acquisition (or strategic investment) of TikTok would be Microsoft throwing its hat in the ring and trying to compete with other tech giants in a new avenue of growth," Wedbush financial analyst Dan Ives said in a statement on Friday.