The development company behind TikTok now intends to make its own smartphone after the immense success with the video app. The smartphone would come with ByteDance’s own apps preinstalled such as news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, TikTok itself and an unannounced music streaming service which was the core ambition of the company for this year.
ByteDance has been hugely successful and as of 2018, it is valued at a staggering $78 billion and is regarded as one of the most valuable unicorn companies till date. The main intention behind the smartphone according to the Financial Times report is actually a dream of the CEO of the company who envisions a smartphone preloaded with many apps (bloatware?). ByteDance had acquired a patent of Smartisan, an electronics manufacturer in China, which will allow the company to make its own smartphones.
Now ByteDance has a mixed reputation throughout the world, TikTok was briefly banned in India due to “cultural degradation” and the U.S has its own hostilities against Chinese manufacturers these days. There is also no word regarding which particular segment the smartphone will be aimed for and the success of the smartphone is again, questionable.
Read more: 10 Pakistani TikTokers killing it on the platform
Similar attempts have been made in the past by core software companies to launch their own smartphones with preloaded apps but they have miserably failed. This includes the likes of Facebook and Amazon which are pretty successful too in their core domain but the smartphone business was a flop.
Do you think ByteDance will be successful if the company launches its own smartphone?
