Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
On December 1, 2021, iQIYI reported large-scale layoffs, and a number of laid off employees revealed on the Internet that iQIYI's layoff ratio was 20% to 40%, which was the largest round of layoffs in the company's history.
Some of these departments have been laid off almost all the staff, and even profitable departments such as content and smart hardware have layoff indicators.
It is reported that iQIYI's layoffs are to speed up the pace of profitability, focusing on content, technology, refined cost management, and flat structure.
Therefore, the company's middle level (director level) has been laid off more, in addition to the older division, older, higher salaries of employees, but also more in the list of layoffs.
If the number of employees disclosed in iQIYI's financial report in 2020 is calculated, the number of employees laid off by iQIYI may exceed 2,000.
iQIYI's Q3 net loss was RMB1.734 billion and its selling, general and administrative expenses were RMB1.2 billion, down 9% year-on-year.
Some media estimates that even if iQiyi lays off 70% of its employees, it will not solve the problem of loss
Is iQiyi swollen, and is there a future?
In this regard, Shen Sihan and Shule of the Business School had an exchange, and poor Dao thought:
iQiyi is just a signal that long video winter is coming.
The traffic of the long video platform has been cut, and iQiyi's loss amount has increased.
In addition, in the new situation, the network synthesis that has led the way in recent years, the future development direction is unclear, the stickiness to users is weakened, and some redundant personnel have also been formed.
This may bring iQiyi's "weight loss" in personnel.
There is also the impact of the suspension of profitable methods such as advanced on-demand, although in fact the impact is not large, but also has a butterfly effect.
In fact, UAiteng has similar troubles.
According to QuestMobile data, the share of short video time in China will reach 19.5% in 2020, much higher than the 7.2% of online videos.
iQiyi's troubles don't stop there, it actually wants to make a long video metaverse.
As a result, the singularity exploded, but the universe did not.
In the eyes of ordinary users, iQIYI is just an online video website, but in fact, iQIYI's tentacles have long been deeply rooted in many other fields.
Since the beginning of this year, iQIYI's diversified business layout has been more frequent.
In January 2020, iQIYI's product matrix launched an APP application called "Chopping Face", positioning the beauty planting community, focusing on celebrity makeup and online IP peripherals, and entering the content e-commerce field.
Then in February, iQIYI launched the short video application "Huangbei" to once again focus on the short video track; in May, the iQIYI Knowledge APP ushered in the first anniversary of the launch.
These are just a few of iQiyi's diversified businesses.
According to the concept of Gong Yu, the founder of iQIYI, iQIYI wants to make an "apple garden" content ecology, and lays out around the entire online copyright content, forming an entire content chain covering video, audio, knowledge payment, e-commerce, games and even finance, and opening up a closed loop of online content ecology.
But the problem is that in the process of iQIYI's diversified territory expansion, there are one or more giants in almost every sector.
In addition to maintaining the forefront of the main online video track, iQIYI's other businesses do not seem to have a strong sense of existence.
Whether it is short videos, games, VR, content e-commerce or others, iQiyi has not made too eye-catching achievements.
Nowadays, iQiyi's layoffs will also lay off the games and short video departments, which seems to illustrate the fact that other businesses have not performed well.
Expanding boundaries around their own areas of strength and using concentric circles is a more common way of playing on Internet platforms.
However, this kind of concentric circles is often easy to be effective under the premise that there is no real top-stream platform in the cross-border field.
iQiyi's diversified attack, the main areas are around the emerging outlet (but there are already a lot of pioneering cattle), such as Tencent similar things have not successfully played a sense of existence, not to mention iQIYI.
There have been many rumors that iQiyi intends to return to Hong Kong for a second listing.
But I have to say that the biggest problem for iQiyi to return to Hong Kong for listing is still the difficulty of breaking through the profit model.
Whether or not it is layoffs, this is the key to the skeptical attitude of the capital market, and it is also the key to its landing difficulties.