A report published by Financial Times has claimed TikTok parent company ByteDance is planning to enter the smartphone market. Just as expected, ByteDance has refused to comment on the report.
According to the Financial Times report, which cites two unnamed sources, ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming has long dreamt of launching a smartphone with the company’s various apps preloaded. Earlier this year, the company acquired certain patents from Chinese smartphone maker Smartisan. In addition to the patents, the company also hired some Smartisan employees, claiming the move would help it “explore the education business”.
Needless to say, the company’s smartphone will be designed by the talent ByteDance acquired from Smartisan earlier this year. While no details regarding the smartphone’s design or specifications have been mentioned in the report, it does say that the device will have TikTok as well as the company’s other apps such as TopBuzz and News Republic pre-installed.
Since TikTok is immensely popular among the youth in various Asian countries, it is possible that the ByteDance smartphone will be targeted mainly at younger consumers. However, there is no doubt that the Chinese company will find it extremely difficult to achieve success in the highly competitive smartphone market. Amazon tried doing something very similar with the Fire Phone a few years back but had to discontinue it after it failed to gain traction with consumers.