LeEco to focus on building an ecosystem across business verticals: CEO, Jia Yueting

LeEco announced many products at its conference in Beijing today, chief among them being three new LeEco smartphones, VR headset, two LeEco smart TVs and the Supercar LeSEE concept. LeEco announced the Le 2 at RMB 1099, Le 2 Pro at RMB 1499 and the Le Max 2 at RMB 2099 for the 4GB RAM and 32GB storage variant and RMB 2599 for the 6GB RAM and 64GB storage.

Speaking about the Le 2, Le 2 Pro and Le Max 2 phones and the two smart TVs, Atul Jain assured that these products will be coming to India soon. “The Live feature which gives you 9 livestreams is already being worked on and Indian customers will soon get that feature as well. Not only Le 2, Le 2 Pro and Le Max 2, but also existing Le 1s customers will get this as an OTA update.'

Atul Jain also touched upon content creation for LeEco in India. “We want to start making our own video content but that will take time. We will start off with partnering with existing content creators.” he said. He mentioned that LeEco had already set up two Content Delivery Networks (CDN) in India and there would be 8 more that will be launched soon.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Jain said that the currently selling LeEco phones in the Indian market such as Le 1s and Le Max will continue to sell and will follow a gradual end of life cycle, even after new phone launches. When asked if the phones will see a price drop when the Le 2 phones launch, Jain said, “See we are always selling our phones below the cost of BOM. One sells phones at a discount only when there is a higher profit margin.”.

Post the launch, at the media briefing event, the LeEco founders spent some time answering queries from the media. Speaking about live streaming using LeCloud, Jia Yueting, Founder and CEO said, “We are using Facebook’s live API in our LeCloud services for live streaming events. LeCloud is serving many platforms that provide live programs of games and entertainment.”.

The latest feature that will be seen on LeEco smartphones is the live multi streaming which will let you stream 9 video channels at the same time. Even a feature such as watching a live sports from different camera angles was announced.

“We want to create a platform across industries. We see our ecosystem as the foundation of our economic model”, said Jia Yueting. He also hinted at the fact that LeEco would eventually sell off smartphones, TVs and even cars for free as they would make their business when customers used Le Eco’s software products.

LeEco has a sales target of 10mn phone units this year. “Many people were very excited about the phones even before launch. Our carriers have already pre-booked 6mn phones from us”, another LeEco representative said.

Speaking about the Supercar LeSEE concept, co founder Ding Lei said, “It’s not just a car. It also has our IT smart hardware. We also have connected applications supported by our cloud capabilities. Only with vertical integration can we bring about disruption. We will be bringing out a D Level car, but there are no immediate price announcements.”.

“We have two principles in making cars: we have an open ecosystem and we are looking at partners to help us accomplish our Ecosystem goals. We will be making the cars in China and overseas. We are working closely with major Chinese OEMs. Major challenge is quick delivery of our car products. We want to lead the car industry on the internet Ecosystem age,” added Yueting.

On being asked what would happen if a user does not pay for the software services, an economic model on which LeEco has big bets, LeEco representatives said that their profit motto is two forked: users paying for content and clients paying for content to reach to the users.

“However, we have enthusiastic users who are willing to play for quality content. We want our profit and revenues to be natural. Even if users don’t pay, that’s fine. We will continue offering internet services and are confident that users will one day start paying”, said Yueting.

The Le 2, Le 2 Pro and Le Max 2 are expected to launch in India soon. LeEco is also planning to get the Super TV along with its content ecosystem as well.

Disclaimer: This correspondent was invited to Beijing, China by LeEco for its product launches. All flight and accommodation expenses were taken care of by LeEco India.