Video Account set to shake up industry

Kuaishou Technology and Tiktok's sister app Douyin have dominated about half of China's short-video industry, but Tencent's (0700) Video Account, a new function of message app WeChat, might shake up the competitive landscape.

About 80 percent of short-video app users came from China in 2019, according to iResearch. Average daily active users in the country has reached 495.7 million in 2019 and is expected to surge by 81.54 percent by 2025, with average daily time spent increasing from 67 minutes in 2019 to 110.2 minutes, the report said.

The competition in the short-video industry is not a zero-sum game, as players could differentiate themselves in terms of targeted users, video length, platform characters, and business model, etc., according to a China International Capital Corporation's (3908) report.

However, WeChat's Video Account has become the biggest uncertainty hanging over the industry, CICC said. Tencent has about a 21.6 percent stake in Kuaishou.

Leveraging a 1.2 billion user base in the super-app, the Video Account's daily active users reached 200 million in June last year, just five months after its launch. Within the WeChat ecosystem, Video Account allows users to share short videos with friends and family members, it also has connected various functions in the super-app.

Tencent is expanding its offering outside personal social networks. Similar to Douyin and Kuaishou, Video Account also supports live streaming with virtual tipping. It is open to all content creators like influencers, celebrities, brands, and companies.

That came after Tencent's independent short video app Weishi, which was launched in 2018, failed to grab market share from Douyin and Kuaishou.