BEIJING, June 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- iQIYI, an independently operated subsidiary of Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) and one of the largest internet and mobile video service providers in China, today announced that the company's paid streaming subscribers have reached five million as of June 15, 2015, 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. 

About iQIYI

iQIYI, launched on April 22, 2010, is an independently operated subsidiary of Baidu, the world's largest Chinese search engine. 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.

For media inquiries, please contact:

iQIYI Inc.

Sophie Yu
Director of International Communications
[email protected]

Foote Group

Yajun Zhang
+86 (10) 8429-9544
[email protected]

SOURCE iQIYI