Alibaba Needs to Acquire a Chinese Video Site to Makes Its Smart TV OS More Fun

As we explained last week, Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba has created a smart TV OS that will appear in China’s sitting rooms later this year. But we’ve seen a demo, and we’re not convinced that it’s fun enough – or that its home shopping feature is slick enough – to persuade Chinese consumers to buy into it. What it really needs is some built-in video-streaming content. If that entails Alibaba investing in – or outright acquiring – a Chinese video site, then that’s what the company should do.

According to ongoing rumors in China’s tech industry, that might actually happen soon with Alibaba thought to be keen on acquiring or taking a stake in PPTV, a familiar old name on China’s internet. The word on the grapevine today is that, according to Sina Tech (via TheNextWeb), an Alibaba-PPTV deal of some sort has already been done. There’s no official word yet.

But it’s believed that Alibaba is not PPTV’s only suitor, with interest from Chinese web portal Sohu and electrical retailer Suning.

After Baidu’s acquisition of PPS in May for $370 million to bolster its existing Hulu-like iQiyi service, there are not many independent Chinese video sites left that still have great content. LeTV is one site that has lots of fun, licensed TV and movie content from China, Korea, and the US, but LeTV has been smart enough to make its own Android-based smart TV OS (pictured below), and that’s now sold on a range of set-top boxes and own-brand smart TVs.

Just like smartphones have to be fun and support lots of games, Alibaba’s pursuit of Chinese consumers in their own sitting rooms needs to have sweeteners.

(Editing by Anh-Minh Do)