Beijing − iQIYI announced that the company’s paid streaming subscribers have reached five million as of 15 June, a 765% annual increase.
“The success of iQIYI’s paid subscription model demonstrates the strong demand of Chinese audience for online-video platforms with high-quality content. Users’ willingness to pay for content reflects the huge opportunity and potential for iQIYI and the online-video market in China,” said Yu Gong , founder and CEO of iQIYI. “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, Senior Vice President 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.”
iQIYI’s paid subscription provides a wide range of premium content to members. In 2014, iQIYI hosted over 60% of the movies played in cinemas in China. Over 80% of movies whose box office income exceeded 100 million RMB in China in 2014 can be found on iQIYI, along with over 400 internet-only movies.
In the future, iQIYI will continue to provide more excellent domestic and international content to members. In 2015, iQIYI plans to acquire approximately a thousand titles from Hollywood.
