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zubikov

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 3, 2014
380
1,257
PA
Should Apple buy Tiktok?

Apple has no growth left, it will have to increase reliance on financial engineering to prop up its crazy valuation. Buying a white-hot social media platform may just be the growth engine, services integration, advertisement and new market exploration platform that Apple needed this whole time. Apple has to compete with Meta, and right now it stands no chance (unfortunately). It has tonnes of cash, but it has to use it for buybacks. So with cheap-ish borrowing costs, expectation of buybacks and a higher cost of equity, wouldn't make sense for Apple to make a splash and buy tik-tok, just from purely business and strategy perspectives?

For full disclosure, I think social media is the beginning of the downfall of Western civilization, and the scourge of our generation. I'm not making this statement as a caring person, but instead trying to think of what someone like Tim Cook should be doing. We all know that Apple the behemoth publicly traded company doesn't run of well wishes and hugs, it runs on money.
 
There’s no money in it unless you sell the data and if Apple truly doesn’t do this then it’s not worth it. Meta is the most likely candidate or Google…I genuinely could not care however. US has a hard-on for TikTok while relevant issues have taken a backseat for decades.
 
Absolutely not. It’s a terrible investment. It would be like buying Vine at its peak. TikTok has only one direction to go and that’s down.


Besides, we have red note now. It’s a real Chinese app unlike TikTok, which was only 20% owned by China.
 
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