Huawei may learn from the cooperation model between Tiktok and Oracle

On September 19, the South China Morning Post published a commentary by its former editor-in-chief Wang Xiangwei titled "Tiktok's cooperation model with Oracle may bring a glimmer of hope to Huawei."

The article pointed out that on September 15, the United States' comprehensive supply cut-off sanctions on Huawei officially came into effect. The chip supply cut seriously affected Huawei's production of smartphones and 5G equipment. Even if Huawei had previously registered to stockpile goods, they would eventually run out. Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of Arm may shake Arm's market neutrality, which is another unfavorable news for China's semiconductor industry.

However, Wang Xiangwei analyzed that the cooperation model between TikTok's parent company ByteDance and American software giant Oracle may provide some reference for Huawei's future development.

Wang Xiangwei, former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, believes that Huawei can learn from the cooperation model between TikTok and Oracle

On September 18th local time, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it would ban "transactions" involving the application software TikTok and WeChat, which involved many contents, including prohibiting the provision of TikTok and WeChat applications and updates in app stores in the United States from this Sunday (September 20th), and prohibiting WeChat from providing any services for transferring funds or processing payments in the United States.

However, ByteDance and Oracle are working together to avoid this. One of the most important ways is that Oracle can become a "trusted technology partner" for TikTok's data security. According to this agreement, ByteDance will remain as TikTok's largest shareholder, Oracle may make a small investment, and US retail giant Walmart may also participate in the investment. ByteDance agreed to keep TikTok's headquarters in the United States and will create up to 20,000 new jobs in the United States.

CNBC quoted people familiar with the matter on September 18 as saying that in order to further ease the US's concerns about TikTok, ByteDance plans to list TikTok in the United States. On September 17, Trump said he opposed the clause in the agreement that allowed ByteDance to continue to hold a majority stake in TikTok.

However, Trump's senior advisers still could not reach a consensus. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin supported the compliance cooperation plan between the two sides, but hawks including Secretary of State Pompeo and Republican Senator Rubio raised concerns.

Wang Xiangwei believes that the cooperation model between TikTok and Oracle can provide some reference for Chinese companies to overcome the concerns of foreign regulators on data protection, that is, to cooperate with local mainstream software companies that have been proven to have data protection capabilities.