To spread its reach, LeEco of China has bought another 11% of shares of Coolpad, the Chinese handsets maker of Coopad range of smartphones. LeEco formerly LeTv had earlier bought 18% of the Coolpad’s shares last June 28th. With this investment, LeEco now holds a total 28.9% of Coolpad’s shares and becomes the largest shareholder of China’s top four domestic mobile brand.
LeEco is one of China’s most popular brands known for video streaming and content eco-system and it entered the smartphone market a year ago with thunderous success. By this April, LeEco had sold more than 10 million smartphones, and its second quarter single month sales has exceeded 2 million units, and the number is expected to be over 3 million in the 3rd quarter as claimed by the company. In India also, it is getting huge response to its Le range of smartphones and the company has recently launched Le 2 and Le Max 2.
With this strategic investment, LeEco will be able to introduce its content ecosystem on around one billion Coolpad smartphones throughout the world. Moreover, Coolpad has a 3000-strong team, with over 7000 patents including more than 500 patents overseas, and has already established 7 major R&D centers around the world, which will greatly strength LeEco’s R&D capabilities and speeds up the globalization of LeEco.
Besides above, LeEco will also benefit from Coolpad’s strong sales channels. Besides more than 500 direct offline stores in China, Coolpad also has strong sales in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. LeEco is optimistic that with this access to Coolpad business, both of them will be able to sell more than 100 million phones in 2017.
It is a win win situation for LeEco in all respects.
