China’s largest video-on-demand provider, iQiyi (愛奇藝), a subsidiary of Internet search engine Baidu Inc (百度), yesterday launched its online video-streaming services in Taiwan.
iQiyi is not the first foreign over-the-top (OTT) service provider that plans to gain a foothold in Taiwan, as Taiwanese consumers are spending more time watching online video streaming than the global average.
In January, the US’ biggest online video-on-demand provider Netflix Inc launched its services in Taiwan as part of its expansion to Asia.
French online video-on-demand provider Dailymotion SA is following suit and is scheduled to launch its services in Taiwan tomorrow.
Taiwanese spent 7.8 hours per week watching video-on-demand on the Internet, 1.8 hours higher than the global average, according to an Ericsson report issued in November last year.
“Taiwan is our first market outside China,” iQiyi founder and chief executive officer Gong Yu (龔宇) told a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
“For iQiyi, Taiwan is the second-biggest Chinese-speaking market other than China as our big data analysis shows,” Gong said.
To provide localized content, the Beijing-based company plans to deepen its collaboration with Taiwanese talent, movie directors and producers to create original content for Chinese-speaking subscribers, Gong said.
iQiyi operates 11 categories of video-on-demand content including movies, soap operas, animation, documentaries and original programs produced by iQiyi. In total, the company offers 125 soap operas made in Taiwan, 80 variety shows from Taiwan and more than 2,000 Hollywood movies.
Subscribers will be able to access iQiyi’s videos on the company’s Web sites via computers or through the company’s mobile application, the company said, adding that it is preparing to deliver its content on tablet devices as well.
Last week, movie distributor and producer Catchplay Inc (威望國際) expanded to the OTT market by launching its video-on-demand service.
The company said the service is streaming content from NBC Universal, Warner Brothers Entertainment and independent studios.
Catchplay said it plans to expand to Singapore and Indonesia soon.
Local telecom companies are also gearing up for providing OTT services. Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) plans to spend as much as NT$20 million (US$611,714) this year to acquire the rights to English-language movies, as well as Chinese, South Korean and Japanese soap operas.
The budget is 50 percent higher than last year, Far EasTone said, while expecting its OTT subscribers to increase to 500,000 this year.
Far EasTone president Yvonne Li (李彬) said that she considers iQiyi to be a serious competitor, as they have similar target demographics.
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) said it aims to grow its streaming video-on-demand subscribers to 700,000 this year from last year’s 520,000.
The company aims to have 210,000 subscribers to its OTT services by the end of this year.
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
RSS