TikTok owner reportedly looking to make a phone with Smartisan

ByteDance, best-known for the TikTok video-sharing app, is reportedly looking to launch its own phone. It has a deal with phone maker Smartisan, it even hired some of its employees and acquired a patent portfolio (both companies are based in Beijing).

ByteDance is one of the Chinese unicorns with over 800 million daily active users. Those come not just from TikTok, but also from the Toutiao (“headlines”) news and information app (which is quite popular in China).

Musical.ly was acquired in 2017 and folded into TikTok. It was a competing video-sharing platform that used short musical snippets (originally courtesy of 7digital, later switching to Apple Music). A music streaming service may be in the works too, based on content licensing deals that Musical.ly secured before it was acquired.

The TikTok app

A couple of months ago it was reported that Tencent (which owns game studios and social networks) is looking to build a phone too. Previously, Facebook tried it, unsuccessfully. The lack of success of previous social phones may not be the only hurdle, however, TikTok recently got in trouble with Indian authorities.

Source (Paywall) | Via