At the beginning of 2021, TikTok was facing multiple market threats and had to decide what strategies to implement to manage them. TikTok was the world’s largest short-video platform, with users in 155 countries. But along with great success in entering numerous geographic markets, TikTok faced various geopolitical pressures, mainly concerning the company’s origins in China. The company had to consider how it could survive emerging geopolitical pressures, manage competitive threats from global technology giants as well as platform envelopment threats, and capitalize on its creative and somewhat addictive platform to expand its reach into new promising markets such as the African continent.

At the beginning of 2021, TikTok was facing multiple market threats and had to decide what strategies to implement to manage them. TikTok was the world's largest short-video platform, with users in 155 countries. But along with great success in entering numerous geographic markets, TikTok faced various geopolitical pressures, mainly concerning the company's origins in China. The company had to consider how it could survive emerging geopolitical pressures, manage competitive threats from global technology giants as well as platform envelopment threats, and capitalize on its creative and somewhat addictive platform to expand its reach into new promising markets such as the African continent.