Company behind TiKTok app is now working on its own smartphone, claims a new report

The world's most valuable startup Bytedance, a company behind viral video-sharing app TikTok, is reportedly working on its own smartphone. According to a new report, ByteDance is working on its own smartphone that would come pre-installed with several of ByteDance's own apps, a strategy that's fairly common among the Chinese smartphone brands. ByteDance has already struck a deal with Smartisan, a Beijing-based technology company, to experiment with its own hardware.

ByteDance has many popular smartphone apps available in the market. For instance, TikTok, which is a highly popular viral video-sharing app in India was briefly banned in the country last month. Despite the trouble, TikTok managed to top the charts on Apple's App Store for the third consecutive quarter, according to a recent SensorTower report. ByteDance also offers a Chinese version of TikTok called 'Douyin' in China.

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For ByteDance, this seems like an ideal strategy to expand its app presence across and they are likely aiming for similar success in the hardware segment as well. This way, ByteDance can expand its reach and get more users to use its services. However, the report notes that other smartphones with pre-loaded apps from Facebook and Amazon have failed in the past. It will be interesting to see whether ByteDance can crack this formula.

ByteDance also has its own news aggregator app in China called Tautio. Similarly, it offers a news app called 'News Republic' in India ByteDance has many other apps to offer in the Indian market like user-generated content app Helo that also faced some trouble in the past, photo-editing app FaceU and viral video apps like BuzzVideo and Vigo Video.

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Recently, ByteDance announced its new chat app called Feiliao (or Flipchat in English). ByteDance is calling Feiliao an open social product and it is hoping that the app will connect people of the same interests in order to make people's life "more diverse and interesting." ByteDance is also likely to introduce its music streaming service in emerging markets like India where Music Streaming is still in its nascent stage.