iQIYI Paid Subs Top 5-Million Mark

BEIJING: Baidu-owned streaming platform iQIYI says that its base of paying subscribers has passed the 5-million mark—out of a total of some 500 million users.

The platform, owned by China's leading search engine, launched in 2010 and in 2013 merged with PPS. Much of its premium content is movies: in 2014, iQIYI says it had more than 60 percent of movies theatrically released in China, and 80 percent of titles that topped 100 million RMB at the box office. Last year, the platform announced plans to buy distribution rights for more than 1,000 U.S. movie titles in 2015, in a bid to satisfy the growing demand from its users for American content.

"The success of iQIYI's paid subscription model demonstrates the strong demand of Chinese audience for online-video platforms with high-quality content," said Yu Gong, the founder and CEO of iQIYI. "Users' willingness to pay for content reflects the huge opportunity and potential for iQIYI and the online-video market in China. As iQIYI continues to enrich its content and to improve services for our members, we are confident that iQIYI's subscription business will continue to experience rapid development."

"Most of iQIYI's users were born after 1980s and understand the value of content," said Xianghua Yang, the senior VP of iQIYI. "With 5 million paid members, iQIYI is the industry leader in terms of paid subscribers. However, this is still a small portion of our over 500 million users, and we expect that the future conversion rate to paid members could be substantial."

AVOD dominates the crowded Chinese streaming landscape. Alibaba is set to be prepping an SVOD offering, and Netflix has said it is looking at ways it can launch in China.