Xiaomi to invest $1B in content to make its smart TV more appealing

Xiaomi founder Lei Jun took to his Weibo page today to reveal that the disruptive gadget maker is to invest US$1 billion in building up content for its smart TV users.

Xiaomi unleashed its smart TV OS in early 2013, available initially only via a cheap set-top box. Xiaomi later released a smart TV, dubbed MiTV (pictured above).

The trouble with Xiaomi’s smart TV OS is that it lacks the content that many of its rivals have, since Xiaomi has no online video site to pair with it. Whereas Baidu’s smart TV OS is boosted by its ownership of iQiyi and PPS, and Alibaba’s is augmented by the tie-up with Wasu Internet TV, Xiaomi’s has limped along with one state-approved backer and a disappointing selection of video apps in its app store. Now the startup wants to change that.

Xiaomi took the first step to correct the issue in April this year when it invested US$310 million in Xunlei. The new US$1 billion war chest will be invested “into content integration and cooperation,” explains a Xiaomi spokeswoman. That will likely involve producing its own web shows, movies, and TV series, though that’s not confirmed at this stage. A number of other Chinese video sites have gone down the original content route in the past couple of years and that’s likely to accelerate in 2015 as China’s media regulator clamps down on imported TV shows.

See: How Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent will dominate China’s movie industry in 3 years

The company has poached Chen Tong, former chief editor of Sina’s media portal business, to head up its new focus on content.

Xiaomi, which is on course to sell 60 million of its Android-based smartphones this year, is rumored to be working on another round of funding that’ll value the firm at US$40 billion to US$50 billion. The previous capital injection valued Lei Jun’s startup, which only started producing phones in 2011, at US$10 billion.