Chinese app developers attend a seminar in Beijing on Oct 27, 2016. (Photo/People.cn)
Although there are only a few video aggregation apps for Android systems, "the competition remains fierce because users are accustomed to watching what's buzzing on giants like Facebook and Instagram," explained Ye. This is where DailyCast came up with their creative idea.
"Just like the Matthew Effects, the rich get richer. YouTube celebrities with more than 10 million fans are the most successful, while smaller accounts, including some really talented ones, do far less well," Ye said. Ye and his team therefore made video stars with 500,000 to 5 million followers their focus. His team has signed about 20 such video celebrities to provide original content for the app, and they plan to continue doing so in further overseas expansion.
One year after its launch, DailyCast now has 500,000 users, more than 30 percent of which are from developed Western countries. More than half are the coveted demographic of English-speakers born between 1984 and 1995, according to Ye. An impressive number, indeed.
Another dogged innovator is NewBornTown from Beijing. NewBornTown was founded in June 2013 by four programmers. Since the very start, they dedicated themselves to capturing the overseas market, believing that path to be the only way a small startup could "make it big" in the future. By 2015, the company's star product, Solo Launcher, became the fifth hottest launch made by Chinese developers on Google Play, boasting more than 10,000,000 users from mostly the U.S., India, Brazil and Russia.
"We created our Solo Launcher first, focusing on making it clean, smooth and small. Gradually, we inserted our own search function, news aggregator and cleaner into it. This part involved a lot of efforts to localize, everything from language to customer preferences. Meanwhile, we worked on innovative advertisement models," said Liu Chunhe, CEO of NewBornTown. He also revealed that his team's five apps on Google Play, including Solo Notifier, Solo Lock Screen, Solo Weather and Solo Battery Saver, now boast altogether 200 million users.
"We used to refer to Renren.com, a social networking site, as China's 'Facebook.' We also referred to Baidu as China's 'Yahoo.' But in the age of mobile Internet, we are seeing more Chinese players taking the lead," Said Annabelle Long, founding and managing partner of Bertelsmann Asia Investments.
But Long also cautioned Chinese tech developers to pay close attention to localization. She warned developers "not to be carried away by a triumphant feeling while exporting Chinese experiences," but to "respect existing innovations in India, Iran, Indonesia, Brazil and Middle East", and deal with each case according to its own circumstances.
Jiang Tianpeng, CEO of Xender, raised another challenging issue. He cautioned content-based app developers to closely abide by each country's patent laws.
