Bottom line: LeEco’s major new push into the US smart TV market could achieve some success due to its recent Vizio purchase, though its concurrent smartphone drive will be a dud due to lawsuits and mediocre product quality.
Watch out, Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). Chinese online video superstar LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104) is taking direct aim at the lucrative US online video and smartphone markets, with plans for major new product launches later this month. I’ll admit I’m doing a bit of educated guessing here, since the company formally known as LeTV hasn’t made any formal announcements yet on its US ambitions.
But all the signs certainly point in that direction, following LeEco’s headline-making $2 billion July purchase of Vizio, a struggling maker of cheap, no-name TVs that is one of the biggest and also most obscure names in the huge US market. Added to that is LeEco’s recent issue of invitations to an event set for October 19 in San Francisco, where it says it will announce its “disruptive vision of a connected ecosystem of content-driven smart devices to the US market.” (English article) Read Full Post…