With TikTok facing challenges in some of its biggest markets such as India and the US, Chinese smartphone maker Oppo is mulling to build its own short video platform, the media has reported. While details about the platform are still scarce, the world’s fifth-largest smartphone vendor may launch the service later this year, a top executive of the company told the South China Morning Post.

“We’re about to launch our short video service in the second half of this year,” Jimmy Yi, President of Oppo Asia-Pacific, was quoted as saying in a recent interview. “Internet services will be important to our business as 5G (network roll-out around the world) continues to develop,” Yi said.

If OPPO indeed rolls out such an initiative, it could become the first major smartphone maker to have built-in short video app on its devices. This is a bit surprising because, among the Android smartphone brand, only Xiaomi appears to have taken a services strategy seriously so far.

OPPO revealed its plan for a short video service at a time when TikTok is facing the threat of a ban in the US if the ByteDance-owned platform does not quickly sell its US operations. TikTok and 58 other apps were banned by India in June.

While OPPO may bank upon millions of its smartphone users worldwide to scale its services, quickly building a platform that can replace TikTok may be easier said than done, as such a service will require a strong creator community.

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