Photo/Shetuwang

Jan. 23 (NBD) – Employees at Smartisan Technology Co Ltd, a Chinese smartphone maker, were asked on Monday to sign new employment contracts that require them to quit holidays and stakes at Smartisan and put them on a six-month probation with ByteDance, parent company of content aggregator Jinri Toutiao and short video platform TikTok, an insider from Smartisan disclosed on Tuesday.

Rumor quickly surfaced that ByteDance have acquired Smartisan.

ByteDance denied the rumor and responded to news outlet Yicai that it has only acquired part of the smartphone vendor's patent rights to explore education businesses. Some Smartisan employees indeed joined ByteDance which is the normal flow of talents. But the company refused to reveal details of the deal, citing confidentiality.

A person familiar with Smartisan told Yicai that the two parties have just initiated cooperation in software and hardware, and the actual products to be jointly promoted have yet to be settled down.

In fact, ByteDance first showed an interest in expanding into the online education sector in 2017. At an education trade conference held by the company, Zhang Yiming, founder of Jinri Toutiao, and Michael Yu, founder of New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc, reached a consensus that cooperation between education and technology firms would be an inevitable trend.  

In 2018, ByteDance's subsidiary Jinri Toutiao pressed ahead in the industry, unveiling a platform for paid knowledge and investing into an education company at the beginning of the year.

Later on, the company challenged the education market by launching an online education brand named Gogokid to take on Tencent-backed education firm Vipkid, and was reported to buy part of the business from an online education company.

The tie-up between ByteDance and Smartisan also highlighted the latter's recent financial woes. Apart from rumors of layoffs and the closure of the smartphone maker's office in Chengdu, a Southeast city in China, the bank account of a Smartisan's subsidiary was reportedly frozen by a Beijing court.

Smartisan was previously in talks with tech titans like Baidu, Huawei and Alibaba for acquisition of the company yet without any result, reported Yicai.

According to the public information, Smartisan now owns 8 software patents, covering functions of voice assistants, clocks, notes and others. It still remains unknown how ByteDance will apply these patents to the education sector. What counts even more is how Smartisan will attract other saviors after selling part of its patents.

Email: wenqiao@nbd.com.cn