Tencent-backed short-video and live-streaming platform Kwai has recently launched a new app, Kwai Concept, to target the core users of ByteDance’s popular short video app Douyin (also known as TikTok internationally).
With a sleek single-video landing page design, which is similar to Douyin’s, Kwai Concept’s goal is very transparent – to lure more users from the first and second-tier cities. Kwai’s original audience was primarily people living in smaller cities.
Right: Kwai Concept’s landing page
Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst at iiMedia Research in Guangzhou, told KrASIA that Kwai’s pivot to big city users reflects the limitation of its current core user base – young people from third or fourth-tier cities and the rural areas whose income and education levers are comparatively lower than that of Douyin’s core users.
“Kwai’s rural users generally have lower income and hence the room for the platform’s future commercialisation will be curtailed,” he said, adding if Kwai wants to improve its ability to cash in, given the already cut-throat competition in the short-video and living-streaming industry, it would have to have a new app that could appeal to users from first and second-tier cities.
China’s short-video and live-streaming industry experienced exceptional growth over the past year. In 2018, the top two players Douyin and Kwai raked in 361 million and 80 million new daily active users respectively, according to QuestMobile, a Beijing-based business intelligence provider on mobile internet.
Write to Luna Lin at lunalin@kr-asia.com