The Smartisan unit hoped to “convey a brand new expertise improve to the good TV ecosystem”, whereas displaying customers and the broader market “the group’s innovation within the good TV subject”, Zou stated through the live-streamed product launch on Monday.
Konka, which additionally makes use of Android and webOS on its different TV fashions, has opened for pre-orders its MEyou OS-powered Aphea A6 Professional TVs in 65, 75, 86 and 98-inch display sizes, which have been launched on Monday. These fashions are priced between 9,999 yuan (US$1,569) and 39,999 yuan, in accordance with Zhu Zhongqing, Konka’s gross sales director in China, in a press release on Monday.
The ByteDance collaboration additionally comes at a time when Konka, as soon as China’s largest TV maker from 2003 to 2007, continues to wrestle in a extremely aggressive home TV market, the place it has seen annual demand steadily decline.
General TV gross sales in China, the trade’s greatest market, final 12 months plunged 13.8 per cent from 2020 to 38 million items, the bottom quantity recorded in 12 years, in accordance with Beijing-based analysis agency All View Cloud.
Shenzhen-listed Konka, which additionally manufactures and sells fridges and different house home equipment, posted income of seven.3 billion yuan from its TV enterprise, or lower than half of that unit’s gross sales in 2014, in accordance with the corporate’s 2021 annual report. TV gross sales accounted for simply 15 per cent of Konka’s whole income final 12 months.
MEyou OS pits ByteDance towards Huawei Applied sciences Co, which launched its personal working system, HarmonyOS 2.0, about 10 months in the past to be used in numerous units together with smartwatches, good televisions, good house home equipment and different sensor-equipped devices which are linked to the web and work together with cellular apps.
In July 2019, the corporate initially made a take care of extremely indebted Android handset maker Smartisan, based by entrepreneur Luo Yonghao, to develop new smartphones. That plan was later suspended by ByteDance, in order that it will possibly begin one other programme centered on training {hardware} and software program merchandise with former Smartisan chief expertise officer Wu Dezhou.
Earlier in 2017, Smartisan offered a cellular working system to a smartphone manufactured by Konka, however that handset by no means took off. Smartisan has not launched one other smartphone mannequin since October 2020.
Privately-held ByteDance, which launched into a sweeping company restructuring final November, has continued to make calculated strikes that guarantee it doesn’t stray from its enterprise targets and Beijing’s tightened regulatory regime, whereas exploring probably important areas for enlargement.
The corporate had a valuation of US$350 billion, in accordance with the most recent Hurun World Unicorn Index revealed by Shanghai-based Hurun Analysis Institute in December. Whole 2021 income reached US$58 billion, up 70 per cent from a 12 months earlier, in accordance with a Reuters report. Its 2020 income, against this, grew 111 per cent to US$34.3 billion.