User spending in Douyin and TikTok on the rise

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June 12, 2019

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User spending in Douyin and TikTok on the rise

What: Short-video app Douyin and its international version TikTok have brought in a total of $9 million worldwide through in-app sales of virtual coins, not including revenue from China’s third-party Android stores, according to mobile app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The total earnings increased fivefold from $1.5 million in May 2018 and was up 22% compared to $7.4 million in April.

iOS dominant: iOS users from China contributed the most to last month’s total, spending $5.9 million on coins, which accounted for 64% of total revenue. iOS and Android users from the US followed, spending $2 million on the coins, or 22% of May’s revenue.

India dropping: India may be one of TikTok’s largest markets in terms of number of users, but in-app sales were almost negligible last month. India's 120 million TikTok users only spent $45,000 on the app in May, less than 0.5% of the total.

New users: First-time installs of the two apps in May reached 56 million, recovering from the two-week ban in India in April that cost TikTok around 15 million new users, according to Sensor Tower figures. Yet new installs showed close to no increase compared to May 2018 and even a 21% drop from January’s 70.8 million.

– Tony Xu

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Shots

Concentrated daily news

Google is preparing to move its production of smart thermostats and motherboards away from China to avoid the 25% import tariff on Chinese-made goods as well as to mitigate the risk of a volatile and often hostile government in Beijing, Bloomberg reported. The Silicon Valley company has already moved a significant portion of its hardware production; motherboards are being migrated to Taiwan and smart thermostats to both Taiwan and Malaysia, according to Bloomberg’s anonymous sources.

People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party media outlet, has launched an online academy for blockchain technology in collaboration with the open-source community led by Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium, also known as FISCO BCOS. The curriculum of the People’s Daily massive open online course (MOOC) covers underlying blockchain infrastructure as well as real-world blockchain applications. A number of free video courses are now available on the MOOC platform.

On Monday, Alipay launched a ride-hailing mini program, allowing users to book rides in 33 cities in 10 countries worldwide, including the US, the UK, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The mini-program, which can be accessed inside the Alipay app, connects to ride-hailing platforms such as Grab in Thailand, Gett in the UK, and Careem in the UAE but allows users to interact with maps and text drivers in Chinese, call local police, and pay in Chinese yuan. According to Jiemian, the service will launch in more than 100 popular destinations across more than 20 countries this year.

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Drips

Small drops to get smart on China's tech world

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5 - Blockchain boosterism

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