The AI Application Competition Between Doubao and Yuanbao: Adhesion, Function, and Future Development

The intense competition between Tencent's Yuanbao and Doubao in the AI application field has drawn significant attention. Doubao has taken a different approach by leveraging Douyin's (TikTok) power to enhance its competitiveness. Recently, Doubao has been testing new features, including a content stream based on user interests and conversation recommendations, similar to a miniaturized version of Douyin within the app.

Since Yuanbao integrated DeepSeek-R1, it has been competing with Doubao in rankings. On February 20, Yuanbao entered the top three free app downloads on the China Apple App Store, surpassing Doubao. However, its ranking fluctuated, and it eventually dropped to fourth place.

This frequent ranking change highlights the high uninstallation rate problem faced by comprehensive AI native apps. Due to insufficient user adhesion, most apps struggle to retain users.

To combat high uninstallation rates, aside from enhancing user adhesion through content, investing in user acquisition has become a crucial strategy for stabilizing market share. Yuanbao has taken a more aggressive approach, leveraging Tencent's ecosystem, including WeChat and QQ, for user acquisition. It has also increased its advertising efforts, even targeting rural markets.

In terms of product design and functionality, Doubao and Yuanbao have their strengths and weaknesses. For instance, Doubao's photo recognition feature provides more convenient guidance, whereas Yuanbao's feature requires manual input of descriptive keywords.

In terms of intelligent body development, although Yuanbao has a larger number of intelligent bodies, Doubao excels in creating popular ones. According to QuestMobile data, Yuanbao's intelligent body traffic is less than 5 million, while Doubao's traffic ranks first.

Tencent and ByteDance have different attitudes toward AI-to-C applications, resulting in differences in product design and operational strategies between Yuanbao and Doubao. Tencent has been relatively slow in AI development, and its self-researched mixed-source model and AI assistant product, Yuanbao, were only launched last September.

Despite Yuanbao's efforts to catch up with Doubao in product design and functionality, it still faces the challenge of retaining users. This is a common problem for AI assistant apps. QuestMobile data shows that the overall monthly average usage time for AI applications is only 132.8 minutes, significantly lower than the average monthly usage time for all apps.

Even Doubao, with the lowest uninstallation rate (17.7%) and the highest monthly average usage frequency (41.7 times), faces internal commercialization challenges. ByteDance management has suggested exploring more low-threshold, multi-modal product forms, as text-based conversation products may not be ideal.

A significant reason AI assistant products struggle to retain users is the lack of a unique account system. Users can switch between AI assistants without significantly affecting the generated results. Tencent and ByteDance leverage their strong account systems and social attributes from WeChat and Douyin to drive traffic to their new products.

The rise of DeepSeek has prompted giants to invest more in C-end applications. Alibaba has frequently acted on AI-to-C, promoting Quark as its AI flagship application and increasing advertising efforts. The competition for the next generation of AI assistant entrances has begun, with Doubao and Yuanbao continuously developing and evolving amidst the intense competition. Their future development and competitive landscape are worth continued attention.