Baidu’s IQiyi to Sell TCL Smart TVs to Compete With Alibaba

September 4, 2013 Leave a comment

Baidu’s IQiyi to Sell TCL Smart TVs to Compete With Alibaba

Baidu Inc. (BIDU), the owner of China’s most-popular Internet search engine, will start selling smart TVs with TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd. (1070) to compete with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in the growing online video business. Baidu and TCL’s 48-inch TV will go on sale online tomorrow at 4,567 yuan ($746), the companies said in a joint statement ahead of a news conference in Beijing today. A second model priced at 2,999 yuan will go on sale in November.The search-engine operator is expanding its online video business to boost its share of a market that consultant IResearch estimates may generate 16.2 billion yuan in revenue next year. The Beijing-based company is competing for users with Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, which said in July it had designed a smart TV operating system and set-top box.

Nasdaq-listed Baidu bought Internet video business PPStream Inc. in June for $370 million and has been combining it with IQiyi.com, which it acquired last year, to create China’s largest online video platform.

Robin Li, chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu, said in April that the company preferred to expand through acquisitions as it tries to navigate a shift from desktops to mobile. More than 464 million people in China accessed the Internet from mobile devices by the end of June, according to the China Internet Network Information Center website. That’s more than the population of any country except India.

The company last month agreed to buy a 59 percent stake in e-commerce website operator Nuomi Holdings Inc. for about $160 million. In July, Baidu said it would spend about $1.85 billion to buy 91 Wireless Websoft Ltd., its largest announced acquisition.

Shares of Baidu fell 3 percent to $135.53 in New York trading yesterday. The stock has climbed 35 percent this year, compared with a 19 percent increase in the Nasdaq Composite Index. (CCMP)

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Lulu Yilun Chen in Hong Kong at ychen447@bloomberg.net; Edmond Lococo in Beijing at elococo@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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