iQIYI Releases Big Data Report on Chinese Online Videos

Movie Box Offices Revenues Increase with Shorter Time Period between Box Office and Online Releases

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Mar 24, 2015, 07:30 ET

BEIJING, March 24, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Chinese action film "On Line" broke Internet box office records last month when it became the first film to have online revenues surpass box office takings less than a week after release. In February, immediately after the film's run in theaters finished, it was released online and within four days, online revenues surpassed its theatre box office takings, the iQIYI Online Video Big Data report found.

At the end of 2014, Chinese language movies were uploaded to online streaming websites such as iQIYI within a month of leaving Chinese theaters, with some films having no window period between online and theatre releases. The action film "On Line" illustrates the potential of eliminating the window period, the report found.

Despite significant progress, a number of challenges remain for China's online movie industry. Due to the immaturity of China's DVD market and problems with piracy, the online market is an increasingly important source of revenue for filmmakers. However, even after extensive negotiations, Hollywood films' window period is three months on average, far longer than Chinese language films.

iQIYI Motion Pictures President Li Yansong said, "The movie window bottleneck is a problem that will affect the expansion of the Chinese market. The longer the window between a movie's release and the time it goes online, the bigger the loss in online box office revenues. Shortening the window increases the potential box-office revenues for a film and is an effective way to fight piracy."

The goal of the report is to provide a strong data-driven foundation on which to expand online movie platforms. The report analyzes trends in the Chinese movie market and online video user volume as well as iQIYI users' age, education level and preferences. iQIYI also released a movie ranking index.

According to iQIYI rankings, iQIYI users' three favorite Hollywood movies are "X-Men: Days of Future Past," "Rise of the Planet of the Apes 2: Dawn of War" and "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes." "X-Men: Days of Future Past" is the second most popular film on iQIYI by ticket sales, behind the Chinese film "Breakup Buddies."

To adapt to the ever-changing habits of Chinese viewers, iQIYI continuously develops video technology, buys rights to content and produces its own shows and films. Overseas and domestically, iQIYI is becoming an increasingly important advocate of intellectual property rights. To deliver a premium experience to its customers, iQIYI streams its content in 1080P high-definition quality and uses Dolby sound technology. Our personalized recommendation services help users find the content they want to watch.

Note

Sources of the iQIYI China Movie Internet Video Big Data Report: Film Bureau of State Administration of Press, Publication Radio, Film and Television; China Internet Network Information Center; iQIYI Data Institute. The iQIYI Film Index is calculated using a variety of performance factors and is then weighted in a comprehensive index to fully reflect the popularity of a movie on iQIYI.

About iQIYI

iQIYI is an independently operated subsidiary of Baidu, the world's largest Chinese search engine, which launched on April 22, 2010. Since its launch, iQIYI has pursued the ultimate online video experience for Chinese users, becoming an industry model in promoting innovation in products, technologies, and marketing.

On May 7, 2013, iQIYI announced a merger with PPS. According to IUT data released by iResearch in December 2014, iQIYI and PPS were among the leaders in the industry in terms of all-platform unique visitors and monthly effective viewing duration. As of December 2014, iQIYI's mobile app (including iQIYI and PPS) was running on 860 million devices, with mobile traffic accounting for 63% of the sites' total traffic. The monthly viewing time on iQIYI and PPS surpassed 1 billion hours for three successive months in 2014. According to data from November and December 2014, mobile accounted for 1.17 billion hours of monthly viewing time on iQIYI, and PCs accounted for 1.15 billion hours. Unique visitors per day on iQIYI reached 44.27 million on mobile devices and 44.18 million on PCs.

In the future, iQIYI will continue to pursue providing customers with ever richer video content and a ceaselessly improving viewing experience.

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SOURCE iQIYI