Qihoo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd.
Type Publicly traded limited company
Traded as NYSE: QIHU
Industry Internet Security
Founded Beijing, People's Republic of China (2005)
Founder(s) Hongyi Zhou (Chairman, CEO, co-founder), Xiangdong Qi (President, director, co-founder)
Headquarters Beijing, China
Area served China
Key people Hongyi Zhou, Xiangdong Qi, Shu Cao (Chief Engineer & Director), Alex Zuoli Xu (Co-CFO), Jue Yao (Co-CFO)
Products Antivirus software, Web Browser, Mobile Antivirus Software, and Mobile Application Store
Revenue USD 329 million (2012)[1]
Net income USD 46.5 million (2012)[1]
Employees 3,000 to 5,000
Website

Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd., or Qihoo 360, is a software company known for its antivirus software (360 Safeguard, 360 Mobile Safe), Web Browser (360 Browsers), and Mobile Application Store (360 Mobile Assistant). It was founded by Zhou Hongyi and Qi Xiangdong in June 2005.[2][3]Qihoo 360 had 450 million users for its Internet Security products and 207 million users for its Mobile Antivirus products as of December 2012.[1]

Business Model

Started with selling third-party antivirus software online, soon it realized the potential of freemium business model in the Chinese market and started to provide its own antivirus products free of charge. In short time, Qihoo 360's security products gained its popularity and market share in China, the revenues are then generated by leveraging its massive user base through online advertising and services like online games, remote technical support, and system integration.

Products

360 Internet Security 2013 - The first international version of 360 pc security product, launched on June11, 2013. It provides the comprehensive internet protection with triple virus detection engine - QVM engine, Bitdefender engine and cloud engine - and protects users against the latest security threats.

360 Mobile Security - The first international version of 360 mobile security product for Android, launched on June11, 2013. It was highly recommended by the Cnet editors with 4.5 out of 5 star rating.

360 Safe Guard - The flagship internet Security product including antivirus and system performance optimization.

360 Mobile Safe - Mobile antivirus and security product for Android, iOS and Symbian.

360 Safe Browser - A web browser features integrated Trident (Internet Explorer) layout technology and Webkit (Google Chrome, Safari) layout technology, meaning that depending on the page being requested by the user, the 360 Browsers would choose the optimal layout technology for that webpage. It is thought that this has caused some confusion on behalf of users trackers and market shares of browsers in China, as Qihoo's browser can appear to be either Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari or Mozilla, instead of the 360 Browsers.

360 Mobile Assistant - A Mobile application store enables users to download, install and manage Android apps from their PC.

360 Personal Start-up Page - The default homepage of 360 Safe Browser, it is a key access point to popular Internet services and applications, had 91 million daily users and generated 450 million average daily clicks in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Financials

Qihoo 360's main revenue sources include advertising space on 360 Startup Page, as well as revenue sharing with independent games developers which have published their games on the 360 Mobile Assistant. The revenue breakdown in 2012 was split between the revenue streams as follows: 67% from advertising, 31% from internet value added services and less than 1% from selling third party software.[1] The revenues increased by 96.0% from $167.9 million in 2011 to $329.0 million in 2012. As of January 2014, the market cap is $11.42B[4]

Investor Scrutiny

In 2011 and 2012, Qihoo 360 has experienced a scrutiny from short sellers on the stock exchange. The main concerns have been quality of accounts and quality of user data provided by Qihoo 360, the short sellers have mainly pointed to the discrepancy in reporting figures market shares between Qihoo 360 and firms such as Baidu. The most prominent critique has come from Citron Research, the stock research firm, and Anonymous Analytics, the hacker network.[5][6] However, Qihoo 360 responded forcefully to both of these critiques by releasing the 20-F full annual report which was audited by Deloitte which is very unusual for American listed Chinese companies and a response to Anonymous Analytics.[7][8]

New Initiatives

In the summer of 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the smart phone market by launching the Battleship phone together with Haier, the large Chinese consumer electronics company.[9] Qihoo 360 said that Haier will provide the hardware while Qihoo 360 will focus on the customising the software, albeit the main operating system will be Android. Qihoo 360 received over 220,000 pre-orders for the phone the first day.[10]

Later in 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the search market by launching so.com, thereby directly competing with Baidu, the dominant search engine in China. Qihoo has seen its share of unique visitors quickly grow to 10.52%.[11]

Most recently, Qihoo 360 has struck deals with major technology companies Google and Nokia for search and mobile phone partnerships, respectively.

On July 18, Qihoo launched its new search engine Leidian.com aimed at increasing its presence in the mobile market. [12]

Future Expanding

In 2013, the company announced they would like to expand into overseas market with English, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, German, French and Korean languages support. Currently they are recruiting languages talents to develop this kind of software.

The firm announced at the end of July in 2013 that it was in early talks to acquire Sohu.com’s Sogou.com search engine for around $1.4 billion.[13]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "2012 Annual Report". Qihoo. Retrieved 1 June 2013. 
  2. ↑ "Management overview". 
  3. ↑ "CEO profile". 
  4. ↑ Quote from NASDAQ.com
  5. ↑ "Citron Research - Qihoo Report". 
  6. ↑ "Anonymous Analytics Research Report". 
  7. ↑ "Annual Report 20-F". 
  8. ↑ "Overview". 
  9. ↑ "Qihoo 360 Launches Battleship Phone". 
  10. ↑ "220,000 pre-order of the Battleship phone". 
  11. ↑ "Qihoo market share". 
  12. ↑ Hsu, Alex (18 Jul 2013). "Qihoo Launches New Search Engine Targeting Mobile Users". BrightWire News. 
  13. ↑ Reuters (19 July 2013). "Deals of the day -- mergers and acquisitions". Reuters. 

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.