Doubao's Lead Among Chinese Chatbots, and Where It Could Go Next

Jiang Wu · 2024-08-18

*Originally published in Chinese on August 18, 2024.*

Downloads and market position

Doubao is ByteDance's chatbot. I check the app store numbers regularly, and as of August 18, 2024 the download counts are: Doubao 96.83 million, Ernie Bot 53.3 million, iFlytek Spark 70.77 million, Kimi 25.27 million, Tongyi 20.62 million, Zhipu 31.47 million, Skywork 35.5 million, and Hailuo 10.15 million. Among them, Kimi is still spending on promotion and has bought many keywords related to this kind of tool, but its download numbers have not grown much.

From what I can see, Doubao will keep raising its spending on promotion, and its product iteration is faster than everyone else's. The one exception is another product that keeps pace with it and is not one of the startup model companies China calls the "little dragons". Doubao is more than a tool or an assistant. It will also bundle search and other services into the platform. I can't see daily active users, and my blind guess is that they may exceed 1 million.

Proof of value and product maturity

Doubao's value as a tool was largely proven in the early stage. PC activity, measured as a percentage, may be able to catch up with mobile activity, and it keeps rising. Doubao is also moving very fast on PC. Besides the plugin, it is promoting and distributing a client packaged on the Chrome engine everywhere it can. If the data is good enough, I would not rule out that it becomes a standalone browser later, entering the browser market by a side route. Another company has the same idea.

Across product types, the level of finish is already fairly high, and the quality of user feedback is close to usable. One reason should be that Doubao's own model keeps getting stronger. Another is that the feedback data it collects should be growing in a positive direction. A further factor may be that the datasets each model company has gotten hold of are nearly level now, so the gaps are shrinking.

What could come next

An independent search system

It could spin out into its own search system and carry the value of search. How would that differ from Douyin search?

A traffic entry point for tools

It could become the next entry point for tool traffic. CapCut covers one definite scenario, which is video. A strong entry point on the tool side would be new, because the strong entry points so far have been on the consumer side.

A personal assistant and its business model

It will keep spending on promotion and move toward a full personal assistant. Progress overseas is ahead of China, and it may charge for it directly.

PC and the browser race

A new round of competition for the PC entry point will begin, and Doubao may enter the browser race directly.

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