Can one successful app translate to a successful smartphone?
With over 500 million active daily users from all over the world, it’s no secret that TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps on the app store today.
Now, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is reportedly planning to cash in on this popularity by creating its very own smartphone. The news first appeared on a report in Financial Times, where two unnamed but supposedly reliable sources shared that the smartphone would come preloaded with many of ByteDance’s own apps, including, of course, TikTok.
The China-based company would also include some other apps, including a new music streaming app and Jinri Toutiao, a news aggregator similar to Reddit. According to the report, the company’s CEO, Zhang Yiming has ‘long dreamt’ of releasing his own smartphone that comes with ByteDance apps.
There’s no solid proof yet that this project will see the light of day or that it even exists, though experts are saying that such a smartphone doesn’t have a lot of potential to become successful in the current market. Even Financial Times itself compares ByteDance’s future smartphone to Facebook’s special phone, which was discontinued shortly after release as it turned out to be a commercial failure.
