As for Apple’s unprecedented action, this was spotted by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in a post on X, who pointed out that Apple issued a support document about TikTok, titled “About availability of TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. Apps in the United States.”

The iPhone 15 and 16 models generally sell for between $1,200 and $1,500 on eBay. When the app was first banned iPhones with TikTok installed were listed for as much as $1 million during the app's 14 hour blackout, Ukrainian technology news outlet ITC reported.

Phones that still have TikTok installed on them are fetching high prices on eBay, days after the social media platform's short-lived ban in the United States. The TikTok app is currently unavailable in the Apple App Store — making it available only to those who previously installed the app before its recent ban.

This has two knock-on effects that are much longer term. First, we now know that a U.S. TikTok ban will be difficult to bypass if it comes back — and the same will be true for any other Chinese (or other) app banned in the same way. There are some options, as I reported over the weekend, but none of them are especially compelling.

Did you delete the TikTok app after it was briefly banned? Your only option may be to purchase a phone with the app already installed on eBay — but the priciest option is reportedly over $5 million. After the viral video-sharing platform went dark last weekend,