Douyin, China’s TikTok, grows daily active users to 600 million in home country amid global headwinds
- ByteDance-owned Chinese short video app Douyin surpassed 600 million daily active users in August, a 50 per cent increase from 400 million in January
- Its growing popularity in its home market comes while its international version TikTok grapples with challenges in India and US
Revealing the latest figure at the Douyin Creator Conference on Tuesday, ByteDance’s China chief executive officer Zhang Nan said that Douyin has helped more than 22 million content creators earn over 41.7 billion yuan (US$6.1 billion) in the past year. The company hopes to raise the number to 80 billion yuan in the next year, she added.
Douyin’s growing popularity in its home market comes while its international version, TikTok, grapples with challenges in India and US, two of its biggest markets.
The global pushback against TikTok has paved the way for competitors to gain greater market share. The four most popular video-sharing apps after TikTok in the US collectively accounted for 44 per cent of the market in August, almost double from 24 per cent in January, according to a blog post earlier this month by analytics firm Sensor Tower.
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Despite TikTok’s rapid overseas growth before its recent troubles, Douyin is still ByteDance’s main money-making vehicle. Combined, TikTok and Douyin ranked first in terms of in-app revenue among mobile apps in the photo and video category globally in May 2020, according to Sensor Tower. But China, served by Douyin, was by far the largest market, accounting for 89 per cent of the total revenue, followed by 6.2 per cent from the US and 1.2 per cent from Turkey.
ByteDance has told some investors that it plans to focus more on growth in China by expanding into new sectors and trying to develop another hit app amid the challenges in overseas markets, The Information reported in July, citing a ByteDance investor.