According to a TechNode report, Baidu is nearing a deal to acquire Joyy’s Chinese operations for a deal worth US$3 billion to US$4 billion. Its overseas business will maintain independence. Baidu and YY did not respond to this news, at the time of writing.
After this report, YY’s stock price surged to as much as 10% before trading closed on Friday. It closed at US$85.13, an uptick of about 5.2%, and the company’s market value reached nearly US $6.88 billion.
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Baidu’s continuous expansion in live-streaming services
In the past two years, Baidu has been working hard on its live-streaming ecosystem, from the launch of a live-streaming channel on Baidu APP, to investing in shares and acquiring various video content producers.
Just last month, Baidu has completed its investment in the live-streaming e-commerce platform “Kameila“. In addition, Baidu has also invested in short video MCN agency Muyun Culture, Zhihu, Guokr, Pear Videos, etc.
The increasing market value of Joyy
Joyy’s second-quarter financial report of 2020 showed that its live-streaming revenue was about 5.6 billion yuan (840 million dollars), a year-on-year increase of 40%, mainly due to the continuous growth of overseas business BIGO live-streaming revenue, while other incomes fell 18.0% year-on-year. In the second quarter, YY’s overseas business BIGO live-streaming revenue has exceeded domestic business.
In addition, in terms of user growth, YY’s overseas business has also seen an increase. Overall, in the second quarter, YY’s global monthly active users increased by 20.4% year-on-year to 102.3 million. Among them, Bigo overseas was 29.4 million, a year-on-year increase of 41.3% and Hago has 31.7 million new users, a year-on-year increase of 25.3%. And in China, the company has gained 41.2 million users, an increase of 6.0%.
Huya and YY were the market leaders in the Chinese live-streaming market in 2018 and 2019. With the promising development of Joyy, Baidu seems not going to miss it. At the same time, Joyy is currently focused on expanding its global presence and China is an important destination.
China’s live-streaming market has been increasing steadily over the last three years. A recent report from the China Internet Network Information Center showed that live-streaming users in China reached 560 million as of March 2020 and it was just 379 million at the end of 2018.
As the huge market potential and the live-streaming market is still on development, all tech giants in China are concentrating theirs efforts in this industry.
GMA, an expert in Chinese market and Chinese business strategies.
