It’s been a busy number of months for Bytedance, one amongst the world’s most beneficial startups and also the operator of worldwide popular video app TikTok. The Beijing-based company has continued to grow its list of apps to include the likes of work collaboration tool Lark, a second messenger referred to as Feiliao as well as a music streaming app, and currently it seems to be taking a daring step into the hardware realm.
Bytedance is attending to develop its own smartphone, the monetary Times according (paywalled) citing 2 sources. A advocator from Bytedance declined to touch upon the matter, however the rumor is few surprise as smartphone pre-installs have long been a preferred approach for Chinese web firms to build up user sizes.
There’s conjointly urgency from Bytedance to carve out a lot of user acquisition channels. once some years of frantic growth, Bytedance did not hit its revenue target for the primary time last year amid fastness ad defrayment in China, per a report by Bloomberg.
Some of Bytedance’s predecessors embrace selfie app maker Meitu, that builds smartphones pre-loaded with its suite of exposure editors and recently sold this phase to Xiaomi because the latter tries to capture a lot of feminine users and newcomers, as well as Snow-owned camera app B612 and Bytedance’s Faceu, shut on Meitu’s heels.
Others have taken a less asset-heavy approach within the period of time of the Chinese web. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — far-famed together because the BAT for his or her ascendency in China’s technical school world — all worked on their own custom automaton ROMs, that include additional options compared to a stock storage pre-installed by a phone manufacturer.
Alibaba’s ambition conjointly manifested in a very $590 million investment in Meizu in 2016 that saw the eommerce large take up the challenge to develop a tailored software system for the telephone maker. a lot of recently in March, WeChat owner Tencent teamed up with vice smartphone maker Razor on variety of initiatives that cowl hardware.
There were early clues to Bytedance’s smartphone endeavor. the company confirmed in january that it's acquired sure patents and a few workers from phone maker Smartisan, though it said at the time the deal was done to “explore the education business.” That was a curious statement as Smartisan’s business has very little to try to to with education. At the terribly least, the tie-up confers hardware development capability on the mobile internet upstart.
Indeed, a supply told the monetary Times that Bytedance founder Zhang Yiming “has long dreamt of a phone with Bytedance apps pre-installed.” withal, this is often tipped to be associate uphill battle, a minimum of in China wherever smartphone sales are cooling and competition intensifies between entrenched players like Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and Apple.
Bytedance has designed a leg up off from home, because of its empire of mobile apps. the corporate is one in all the few — and lots of would argue the primary — Chinese net startups that manage to realize a pregnant foothold globally. TikTok has systematically topped the worldwide app ranking within the last few months, although it’s additionally encountered some obstacles in a number of its larger markets.
In the us, the Federal Trade Commission obligatory a punished on TikTok for violating children’s privacy protection law. the govt. of Asian country, that has driven a lot of of TikTok’s recent growth, additionally took issue with the app to quickly ban it on account of felonious content.
While the US market could also be troublesome to penetrate given Washington’s considerations round the security threat that Chinese firms might gift, Asian country is currently crowded with Chinese brands. a search done by Counterpoint found that within the half-moon, Chinese makers LED by Xiaomi controlled a walloping sixty six p.c of India’s smartphone market. that means Bytedance, aboard its potential ally Smartisan, isn't solely up against native rivals in Asian country however additionally the acquainted faces from its home market.
