Joint venture aims to profit from China's livestreaming, short video sectors

Beijing Gehua CATV Network Co Ltd on Friday announced it would establish a joint venture video company with Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd and People.cn Co Ltd, the online portal of the People's Daily, as the three parts seek to be at the forefront in China's booming livestreaming and short video sectors.

Under the strategic partnership, Beijing's municipally owned cable TV company said it would combine its advantage in wide coverage of terminals in Beijing, Tencent's technology platform and People.cn's content and brand strength, jointly working on content production and distribution in mobile video fields.

Guo Zhangpeng, chaiman of Beijing Gehua CATV Network, said the company would comprehensively integrate its resources and actively work with Tencent and People.cn to facilitate the process of the project.

"Taking this as the beginning point, we hope to promote further strategic cooperation with the two parties for in-depth and wide-ranging development." Guo added.

Pony Ma, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said the company always attached great importance to collaboration with mainstream media.

"Tencent will fully employ our platform and technology advantages, such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, to support the development of mainstream media."

Fueled by the boom in mobile internet service and the popularity of affordable smartphones, a wide range of video companies are ramping up efforts to invest in the emerging livestreaming and short video sectors, aiming to cater to the growing number of young audiences.

Statistics from the market research firm iiMedia Research noted that in terms of viewers, the Chinese short video market is expected to grow 58.2 percent in 2017 to a record 242 million.

A report released by app tracker App Annie showed that China's livestreaming market was expected to reach $5 billion by the end of 2017.