TikTok Contemplates Building Global Headquarters Outside China

According to the Wall Street Journal, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is considering setting up a global headquarters for its popular video sharing app TikTok outside of China.

Insiders say that possible locations include Singapore, London and Dublin, with no city in the United States entering the list. Currently, TikTok does not have a separate headquarters, with its top-level executives based in Shanghai.

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ByteDance previously launched Douyin for the China market in September 2016. TikTok, known as the overseas version of Douyin, was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android, to cater for overseas audiences.

According to the market research firm SensorTower, in the second quarter of 2019, TikTok ranked fourth globally in terms of total downloads, following closely behind Facebook’s WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook apps. In February 2019, TikTok, together with Douyin, reached one billion downloads globally, excluding Android installs in China. According to App Annie, TikTok was the 7th most downloaded mobile app of the decade.