iQiyi will soon be offering films from Universal Pictures. (Photo : www.engadget.com)
IQiyi, Baidu's online video subsidiary unit, recently announced that it has already reached a five-million mark for the number of its paid subscribers. It also added that it is eyeing to improve its content for these subscribers.
Gong Yu, iQiyi founder and CEO, said during an event at the Shanghai International Film Festival that the firm will "continue to provide more excellent domestic and international content to members" in the future.
As part of its plans, iQiyi intends to purchase distribution rights to over 1,000 U.S. film titles, and make seven local movies and one Hollywood-like production. The firm currently faces swelling demand for Hollywood content from its subscribers.
Meanwhile, more than one million users have participated in the crowdfunding program for the Ann Hui film "The Golden Era." The program raised around $3 million in merely three minutes.
The company has also partnered with smartphone startup Xiaomi through a deal worth $300 million. The agreement allows the participating parties to buy movies and television shows.
"The success of iQiyi's paid subscription model demonstrates the strong demand of Chinese audiences for online-video platforms with high-quality content," Yu remarked.
In 2014, the firm was able to host over 60 percent of the films that landed on Chinese theaters. Moreover, above 80 percent of movies, which reached a box-office income above 100 million yuan last year, can also be found on iQiyi.
Also found on its website are more than 400 Internet-only film titles.
Yu also stated that the issue of piracy has lessened for the recent period. As well, payment systems enhancement also made a big difference in encouraging people to be a paying subscriber.
"We want to focus on transferring free users into paid users," he said on that note.
Yang Xianghua, iQiyi senior vice president, revealed that most of their subscribers are young, with the majority born after the 1980s.
"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," he enthused.
