Native name 厦门美图网科技有限公司（美图公司） Traded as SEHK: 1357 Products Smartphones, Software Founded 2008 | Type Public Industry Consumer electronics Headquarters China | |
 | ||
Stock price 1357 (HKG) HK$ 18.00 +3.12 (+20.97%)17 Mar, 4:09 PM GMT+8 - Disclaimer Subsidiaries Beijing Meitu Huyu Technology Co., Ltd. Profiles | ||
Why selfie app meitu could be worth billions
Meitu Inc. (SEHK: 1357) is a Chinese technology company established in 2008 and headquartered in Xiamen, Fujian. It makes smartphones and selfie apps. Meitu's photo-editing and sharing software for smartphones is hugely popular in China and other Asian countries, attracting 456 million users who post more than 6 billion photos every month. As of October 31, 2016, Meitu's apps have been activated on over 1.1 billion unique devices worldwide. According to App Annie, Meitu has been repeatedly ranked as one of the top eight iOS non-game app developers globally from June 2014 through October 2016, together with global Internet giants such as Alibaba, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Tencent. MeituPic, their top app, has 52 million active daily users and 270 million MAU. On December 15, 2016, Meitu went public on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Hong Kong Exchange has not seen a technology offering of this size in nearly a decade.
Contents
Products
Meitu currently has 13 apps installed on more than 1.1 billion unique devices worldwide, generating approximately 6 billion photos per month. Outside of China, Meitu's three flagship products include:
About 70% of social media users in China upload at least one picture to social networks every week, according to a report by iResearch, a China-based analytic agency, in June. More than half of the masses of selfies and other photos posted on China's major social media platforms were processed by Meitu's apps, it said.
According to App Annie, Meitu is the fourth largest app developer in China. Meitu's most popular apps in China include:
Offices
Meitu is based in Xiamen, China. Outside of China, Meitu has set up offices in Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and the United States.
Controversy
On January 20, 2017, CNN website reported Meitu apps are collecting information about users for advertising purposes, and sends that data back to servers in China. But Meitu denied CNN's report, that the app is leaking user's privacy. The company said collecting users' data is to "optimize app performance, its effects and features, and to better understand our consumer engagement with in-app advertisements" in an official statement.