
WORLDSEC LIMITED
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DIRECTORS’ REPORT (CONTINUED)
The AI commercialisation strategy of the ByteDance group has also evolved to start embracing
converged hardware-software ecosystems. The Ola Friend smart headphones, equipped with Doubao’s
real-time translation engine, achieves 150-millisecond bidirectional Mandarin-English latency, a delay
claimed to be less than that of Google Pixel Buds Pro, owing possibly to the use of localised
infrastructure rather than global cloud processing. On the other hand, even though the AI-powered
companion toy, Xianyanbao, has only been introduced by the ByteDance group as a gift item and has
yet to be officially launched as a commercial product, it has gained favourable publicity and popularity
for blending education, entertainment and companionship through interactive engagement and shows
good future market potential.
In pursuit of building a robust AI research foundation to navigate the evolving technological landscape
in the long term and to sustain long-term development and growth, Dr. Yonghui Wu, a veteran Google
researcher with expertise in, among others, machine learning and natural language processing, has
been appointed to lead the newly formed Seed Edge team at the ByteDance group. This marks a pivot
in the strategic direction of ByteDance to seek broader innovation goals. Separate from the division
that focuses on metric-driven product application development with a near-term contribution objective,
the Seed Edge team under the leadership of Dr. Yonghui Wu is set to concentrate on foundational and
theoretical artificial general intelligence research towards long-term intelligence optimisation that
could have far-reaching implications in the highly competitive technological landscape.
Aside from the AI business expansion, the ByteDance group continued to maintain a strong foothold
in the mobile app space. Douyin and TikTok became the first non-gaming apps generating an
aggregate of US$6 billion in annual gross in-app purchase revenue in 2024. This figure was more than
double that of any other app or game during the same period. In fact, the two platforms set a new
quarterly record, generating US$1.9 billion in gross in-app purchase revenue in the fourth quarter last
year.
Additionally, driven by strategic recalibrations and targeted global expansion efforts, the social e-
commerce segment of the ByteDance group also performed well in 2024. Domestically, Douyin e-
commerce recorded GMV of US$478 billion last year, representing a 35% year-on-year growth, as
revealed in the ByteDance group’s 2025 all-hands meeting. This performance solidified Douyin’s
position as China’s third-largest e-commerce platform, trailing only Alibaba’s Taotian Group and
PDD Holdings. Internationally, TikTok Shop achieved global non-China GMV of US$32.6 billion,
according to video commerce data analytics firm Tabcut.com. The U.S. was TikTok Shop’s largest
single-country market with a 28% GMV contribution. The South East Asian region, led by Indonesia,
Thailand and Vietnam, collectively accounted for 69% of global non-China GMV, cementing its role
in leading the expansion of TikTok Shop.
On the geopolitical front, TikTok remains a thorny subject in the U.S. On January 17 2025, the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary
Controlled Applications Act, authorising the TikTok ban unless ByteDance divests its U.S. operations
by January 20 2025. However, President Trump intervened on his first day in office by issuing an
executive order to delay the ban enforcement for 75 days, extending the enforcement date to April 5
2025. But the thorny situation, which was reportedly on the verge of a resolution, was abruptly further
complicated by a new round of heightened and sweeping tariff measures unveiled by the Trump
Administration against a host of trading partners including China. While President Trump issued a
second executive order on April 4 2025 for another enforcement delay until June 19 2025, TikTok was
unfortunately caught in middle of the trade war being used as a bargaining chip between the two
economic powerhouses. This became an added uncertainty for the
TikTok divestiture deal.
Nonetheless, TikTok maintains 170 million monthly active users in the U.S. and retained its position
as the U.S.’s second-most-downloaded app with 52 million downloads in 2024 according to Sensor
Tower. But because of the tariffs imposed on Chinese imports, sales of China-related platforms
including TikTop Shop in the U.S. have begun to fall as U.S. price-sensitive consumers perforce adjust
their shopping habits of low cost online purchasing ahead of the end of the tariff de minimis
exemption for items valued below US$800 on 2 May 2025.