Apple, Disney trying to halt WeChat ban in US: Report

San Francisco, Aug 15 (IANS) Several companies including Apple, Ford, Walmart and Disney have called on US President Donald Trump administration to end an executive order seeking the ban of WeChat and TikTok in the country as it would cause harm to US businesses trying to trade in China.

The US companies wanted clarification over the executive order that would bar “any transaction that is related to WeChat” by Americans, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Apart from the ban order on Chinese short-video-making app TikTok, Trump also issued another similarly-worded executive order against WeChat, a messaging, social media, and electronic payment application owned by the Chinese company Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Tencent said it was “reviewing the executive order to get a full understanding.”

The executive order to ban WeChat from the Apple App Store could lead to 25-30 per cent drop in iPhone shipments in the Chinese market, famed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted.

Meanwhile, 95 per cent of the 1.2 million Chinese Apple users said that they would rather switch to an Android device than use an iPhone without WeChat.

China, with its population of 1.44 billion people, accounted for about 15 per cent of Apple’s total June quarter revenue.

WeChat is a popular Chinese messaging application that is especially successful in China.

–IANS

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