Beijing – Youku Tudou Inc., China’s leading Internet television company, announced on April 24 that it has inked strategic partnerships with most of China’s smart TV and OTT manufacturers, eight of which are an exclusive integration of the pre-installed Youku Tudou App.
In April, Youku announced four new partnerships with OTT companies. All four partnerships include the exclusively pre-installed Youku Tudou TV app. Partners include: Huawei Technologies, China’s set-top box provider to the telecom operator market that is projected to distribute 1.5 million set-top boxes this year; ZTE 9 Network Technology’s Fun Box, China’s first Android-based games box; and Goldweb Technologies and Jiuzhou Electronic Technology, which, with projected sales of 800,000 boxes this year, are China’s leading OTT makers.
The four additional partnerships bring Youku Tudou into strategic alliances with all top 10 major OTT manufacturers, including Coship Electronics. Youku Tudou is also in partnership with China’s top six smart TV players, with Changhong, Haier and Konka all choosing to exclusively pre-install Youku Tudou App. Youku Tudou’s applications are available on smart TV and OTT hardware created by dozens of smaller smart TV companies and OTT manufacturers.
Youku began implementing its smart TV and OTT strategy in the 2nd half of 2013. Youku has obtained its position as a market leader by adopting an open partnership model, and working closely with partners to develop Youku Tudou TV App in order to maximise user experience. Different from standard TV apps, Youku Tudou App is a highly customised application that can be embedded in multiple smart TV and OTT devices. Youku Tudou App comes pre-installed on smart TV and OTT hardware.
Youku Tudou TV App includes a media player, customised channels, social features and search capabilities among other features. All OTT users will be able to access more than 7,000 titles of licensed TV dramas, films and other programming as well as hundreds of in-house productions created by Youku.com and Tudou.com, as well as over 100 million user generated content.
In the smart TV application market, Youku TV App comes in at number one in terms of downloads across major markets. According to 7po.com data in March 2014, Youku Android TV was downloaded close to 6 million times, whereas the No. 2 and No. 3 apps were downloaded 3.5 million and 2.2 million times respectively.
“We are very pleased to see the early success of our OTT strategy, which proves that Youku Tudou’s brand, content and technology is well respected by our partners,” Yao Jian, Chief Technology Officer of Youku Tudou Inc., said. “This area is key to our own multi-screen strategy as more Chinese viewers opt to consume entertainment on a myriad of devices, ranging from televisions to smartphones. Our adaptation to this trend positions Youku Tudou as a stronger leader in a multi-screen world.”
The global smart TV market tripled in the past five years, according to Digital TV Research, and will more than double in the next five years to reach nearly 800 million sets by 2018. China has now become the largest smart TV and OTT market worldwide with around 20-30 million sets sold annually.
