News

Xiaomi invests US$300 Million into Video Website

News
November 12
by chris eilers

The news about Xiaomi just keep coming these days. Xiaomi has apparently invested USD$300 Million into the chinese online video website IQiyi.com. This investment is part of Xiaomi’s strategy of increasing their online TV content and comes shortly after their announcement of raising USD1.5 Billion in a new funding round.

xiaomi investment

IQiyi.com is owned by chinese Google, the search engine Baidu and Xiaomi will be the first major shareholder. At the same time Baidu has also increased their investment amount into the website, to match Xiaomi’s investment.

According to China Business Network at the same time Xiaomi invested into another chinese video website, Youku Tudou. Both of the online video websites, IQiyi.com and Youku Tudou own TV licences by the Chinese government.

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Xiaomi’s CEO on being compared often to Steve Jobs and Apple remarked already earlier that he sees Xiaomi much more like Amazon: “Our business model is more similar to Amazon,” Lei said, referring to Amazon’s habit of selling hardware at cost. On their profit strategy he said “We sell all our products online and our gross profit rate is very low. Our price is one third of Apple’s,” he said. “We make our profits through content and services.”

Last month Xiaomi already announced that they were going to invest nearly USD$1 Billion into internet TV content to increase their offering on MiTV and Mi BOX. Xiaomi’s expansion into online tv content puts them up against other chinese online giants like Tencent and AliBaba that are also investing agressively into Online TV Content.

Earlier we reported that Xiaomi is targeting to close a USD$1.5 Billion funding round. A big share of this funding will go into buying and developing their own video content for Xiaomi TV.