Latest update April 1st, 2015 6:34 PM
EFM – iQIYI Motion Pictures CEO Li Yansong Demystifies the China VOD Market
Photo credit: Ke Yun. Reported by Ninja Tsui.
The online video market is getting more important in the Chinese film market.
There are 3 reasons why VOD can grow this fast in China:
- China’s Internet infrastructure is constantly updating thanks to the booming economy. Each household is able to enjoy 1 G bandwidth, or even 10 G in some cases, which has paved the way for watching streaming videos to become the most popular online activity among netizens in China, whereas before it was e-commerce, online gaming and search.
- Online payment like WeChat Pay and Alipay enable the viewers pay quickly for a film, a monthly or yearly membership.
- Government’s effective fighting against piracy. It takes one much longer time to locate a downloadable pirate content.
Currently, film takes up 95% of the paid content in China, out of which 50% are local films, 40% are Hollywood titles and the remaining 10% are from Europe. Local films take such a great proportion because they almost have no window period – right after the theatrical release, these films go directly online, because in China, there is almost no DVD market any more.
That is why iQIYI has been trying to shorten the window period of the Hollywood titles, which, in some cases of new films, has been shortened to 3 months or even 2 weeks, after 2 years of negotiation. It is hoped that, in the future, there would be no window period at all.
China is now a fast-consuming society. People consume content whenever they can – thanks to the fast urbanization, it takes much longer time to commute between work and home and their free time is much fragmented. Watching films and videos on the bus or in the metro is an ideal way to ease the daily stress and entertain. Again, almost all underground transportation is now well-connected in China, some even has 4G services, while the price of Wi-Fi is constantly decreasing. (Also, smart phone has become so affordable that in big cities, each has one, or two.) More and more content is consumed on mobile devices, other than on desktops, aka, VOD on-the-go. Each day, over 1oo million active users watch videos on iQIYI.
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