Is ByteDance set to become China’s most valuable internet company?

TikTok owner ByteDance is growing at a staggering rate and with no sign of slowing down as it battles rivals for dominance in multiple areas; some now see it as heading for the top spot in China’s digital realm.

The background

Created in a Beijing apartment just nine years ago, ByteDance is now one of the world’s most valuable start-ups, worth around $400bn, according to the South China Morning Post, which details some of the tech giants it is taking on:

 - Social media and gaming: Tencent

 - Local services: Meituan

 - E-commerce: Alibaba

 - Video: Kuaishou

How it’s winning

• Key to success are ByteDance’s algorithms, which pull in ever-greater numbers of China’s mobile phone users.
• ByteDance’s big advantage is its huge reach – its short video sharing app, Douyin, has more than 600 million daily users alone.
• Content-driven advertising is for now the company’s biggest earner – last year earnings are believed to have more than doubled to around US$37bn. In China alone, ad revenue reportedly reached around $27.2bn in 2020.

Soundbite

“There’s only so many ways to make money online. The big markets – games, e-commerce, ads – are far from being winner-takes-all. Traffic is king, after all, and if there’s one thing ByteDance has in spades, it’s traffic” – Matthew Brennan, China tech analyst and author of ‘Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China’s ByteDance’.

Sourced from South China Morning Post