China's video streaming service iQIYI inks app partnership in Malaysia

Chinese video streaming platform iQIYI announced its first app partner outside China with Malaysia's pay-television operator Astro Malaysia on Wednesday.

The collaboration will give Malaysian audiences access Chinese content with high quality video streaming while giving Malaysian talent and content to be featured to a global audience, Astro said in a statement.

Astro chief executive officer Henry Tan Poh Hock welcomed the partnership, saying he believed it would be the start of many more initiatives with iQIYI.

“The partnership is timely as we are seeing growing streaming services and interest as consumers are able to enjoy the rich content choices in a convenient and personalized manner,” he said, adding that the company looked forward to benefiting from iQIYI’s data analytics and artificial intelligence.

Yang Xianghua, iQIYI president of membership and overseas business group, said the close partnership would continue to fully synergize through the creativity and capabilities of both parties to provide Malaysian audiences with better services.

“The exchanges and communications of global content have become more accessible with the help of wireless technology, data storage technology and big-data analytics,” he said.

“We hope to provide quality entertainment services to overseas users by sharing our research and development results, data storage capability and computing power with our partners.”

The partnership will also see the first content collaboration for three Astro originals programs featured on the iQIYI App.