Why is TikTok making smartphones? The answer turned out not simply for profit

Facebook, Amazon and many other software companies – except Google – have tried and failed to penetrate the smartphone market. But those trails didn’t stop ByteDance, an emerging technology company in China, trying to give it a try.

ByteDance is the short video application development company Douyin (or TikTok) and news aggregator Toutiao. Although the company is still in its infancy, the tech unicorn’s quick success has made major competitors reluctant. And recently, the company has revealed the launch of its first smartphone model in China. The agreements show that the company has obtained a patent and a personnel organization from Smartisan, a struggling phone company.

But it was this choice that made many people suspicious. Because Smartisan is a brand that is not very famous. Not to mention that the smartphone market in China is currently very fierce. 90% of this market is currently torn by 5 major phone companies, leaving only 10% left for smaller manufacturers to struggle to survive.

But ByteDance is not too worried, because thanks to its success in the software field, the company has enough spare cash to bet on this game. In the latest round of fundraising, the company received $ 1.3 billion. Most recently, ByteDance also bought Judedeck, a music software development startup created by AI.

ByteDance’s first smartphone with the Smartisan brand.

Going back to the phone problem, launching a new smartphone is clearly an effective (albeit expensive) way for ByteDance to create a unique testing platform for its applications. The new Smartisan phone has keyboard shortcuts for displaying Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok and allows users to apply TikTok filters and effects on videos.

However, this is clearly not a feature that is expensive enough to make users switch to love this new phone. A lot of past experience has shown that efforts to change the way users interact with phones are risky.

One of the typical examples is Facebook. The social networking company has partnered with HTC to bring the Facebook Home platform to the Taiwanese phone company. Specifically, on the HTC First, its interface is designed with the motto “put Facebook on everything you do and see”. But its results were worse than expected. Facebook engineers also admit this is a mistake. Both phones and Facebook Home fell into oblivion as soon as they launched in 2013.

Amazon Fire.

Amazon Fire Phone, launched in 2014, suffered a similar fate. CEO Jeff Bezos said his company decided to build a phone based on the question: “If we were going to create an X smartphone, how would it be different? How to it’s better?”

The end result shows that users are not interested in this product of Amazon. On this device, the Firefly app allows users to take photos of products or use microphones to listen to music and movies so that they can direct them to relevant Amazon product listings. You can also instantly open up the Amazon app with the dedicated button. But in the end it had very bleak sales.

But with ByteDance is different. Perhaps the ultimate goal of the Chinese company is not to make phones, but to branch into other hardware businesses.

Wu Dezhou, former director of Huawei, who currently leads Smartisan, said his team is also working on a piece of education related hardware. The last hope is to unite ByteDance’s strengths in Smartisan’s video and technology expertise to create new products.

Previously, ByteDance representatives did not place high expectations on their phone business. Share with Reuters in July, the company said smartphones were only part of the development plan.

“Over the years, we have seen increasing investment in hardware business from leading Internet and software businesses , “ Counterpoint analyst Ethan Qi said. “I think ByteDance only follows this trend and they are likely to exploit other devices besides smartphones, in the near future.”

In fact, if you’re a big TikTok fan and want to experience the app manufacturer’s smartphone, that could be a daunting task. ByteDance says the phone is exclusive to customers in China.

Refer to Abacus News