China’s Cheetah Mobile, best known for its utility apps, dives into hardware with smart air filter

Beijing’s Cheetah Mobile is best known for its utility apps, chief among them Clean Master, which removes unwanted files from one’s smartphones. But the company isn’t stopping at cleaning mobile devices – it’s bent on cleaning actual households, too. Yesterday Cheetah Mobile CEO Fu Sheng revealed a smart air filter for home use, marking the company’s first foray into hardware.

The filter, known as baomi in Chinese, removes tiny particulate matter (PM) from the air. The device monitors the presence of PM 1.0, PM 2.5, and PM 10 – each figure represents the size of said particles in microns.

The device will go on sale in late November and will cost RMB 998 (about US$163). According to Fu, that’s well below the RMB 4000 (about US$650) that equivalent high-end filters would go for.

At a press event that Tech in Asia attended remotely, Fu explained how he conceived of the air filter at the beginning of this year, but couldn’t bring the product to fruition due to Cheetah’s then-upcoming IPO.

Cheetah’s expansion into hardware marks a deviation from the its core business. The company earns revenue from its free-to-download utility apps by using them as distribution channels for ads. It gets its utility apps in front of eyeballs through aggressive marketing campaigns and with the help of Kingsoft, which owns a controlling stake in Cheetah. The company currently claims it has 284 million monthly active users across its suite of apps, 67 percent of whom reside outside of China.

It’s not immediately clear how Cheetah’s air filter will play a role in the company’s business operations in the future. Fu says that the company will “definitely not rely on hardware” to earn money. When asked about the relationship between the air filter and Cheetah’s utility apps, Fu played it cute, noting the clean-up theme shared by the filter and Clean Master. “Smart home devices mark the first step in our effort to unite hardware and software. We don’t want to just remove the garbage from our users’ phones, we want to remove the garbage from the air they breathe.”

If Cheetah is looking to jump into the fledgling smart home industry, selling air filters to pollution-drenched Chinese consumers ought to be a great start. However, the space remains crowded, with foreign-made brands like IQAir and Blueair competing with a slew of Chinese startups that grace the pages of Demohour.