TECH THAT...

A ROUND-UP OF THE LATEST NEWS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

TWITTER AND MICROSOFT EYE TIKTOK AS A POSSIBLE PURCHASE

SPEAKING of TikTok – there is an alternative future for it, should the US’s intention to ban it from its shores come to fruition. A US company could buy it.

We’re hearing that Microsoft has already gone into negotiations to snap up the US side of TikTok’s business, but there’s no word on how that’s progressing except to say Bill Gates doesn’t seem keen.

This week we learn that Twitter has expressed an interest, too.

The only caveat to that news seems to be that, such has been the phenomenal growth of TikTok over the last year, Twitter may not even be able to afford to buy its US operation.

Such will be the political and economic sensitivities of a deal for either Microsoft or Twitter, it’s hard to see how either could pull it off, especially given the short 45-day warning the US gave for changes to be made before its TikTok ban comes into force.

That deadline runs out on September 15.

TOSHIBA CLOSES THE LID ON ITS LAPTOPS AFTER SALES PLUNGE

IN a piece of news that looks back instead of forwards, we report the sad end to a former laptop giant’s participation in the market. Toshiba, which released its first laptop computer in 1985, this week confirmed that it had sold its remaining stake in that business to Sharp.

The news comes as little surprise – Toshiba’s struggles in the PC world are well documented. In 2011 it sold somewhere in the region of 17m computers. Just six years later this had fallen to fewer than 2m. That’s partly an industry trend – people do a lot of their computing on their phones. But also Toshiba fell into the middle ground of the market – not the cheapest, nor the best – and that ultimately proved unsustainable.