Qihoo 360

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Qihoo 360
Publicly traded limited company
Traded as NYSE: QIHU
Industry Internet Security
Founded Beijing, People's Republic of China (2005)
Founder Zhou Hongyi (Chairman, CEO, co-founder), Qi Xiangdong(President, director, co-founder)
Headquarters Beijing, China
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Zhou Hongyi, Qi Xiangdong, Cao Shu (Chief Engineer & Director), Xu Zuoli Alex (Co-CFO), Yao Jue (Co-CFO)
Products Antivirus software, Web Browser, Mobile Antivirus Software, and Mobile Application Store
Revenue $1.39 billion (2014)[1]
Profit $222.8 million (2014)[1]
Number of employees
 4,200
Website www.360.com

Qihoo 360 (Chinese: 奇虎 360; pinyin: Qíhǔ 360, pronounced CHEE-hoo in English), full name Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd., is a Chinese internet security company known for its antivirus software (360 Safeguard, 360 Mobile Safe), Web Browser (360 Browsers), and Mobile Application Store (360 Mobile Assistant). It was founded by Zhou Hongyi and Qi Xiangdong in June 2005.[2][3] Qihoo 360 had 496 million users for its Internet Security products and 641 million users for its Mobile Antivirus products as of June 2014.[4]

The company's head office is in Chaoyang District, Beijing.[5]

Business Model

Qihoo 360 initiated its business operations by selling third-party antivirus software online. Soon afterwards they realized the potential of the freemium business model in the Chinese market and started providing their own antivirus products free of charge. In a short period of time, Qihoo 360's security products gained popularity and market share in China. Their current revenues are generated by leveraging their massive user base through online advertising and services such as online games, remote technical support, and system integration.

Products

  • 360 Internet Security - PC security product, launched on June 11, 2013.
  • 360 Mobile Security - Mobile security product for Android, launched on June 11, 2013.
  • 360 Safeguard - Internet security product including antivirus and system performance optimization.
  • 360 Secure Browser - Web browser that features integrated Trident (Internet Explorer) layout technology and Webkit (Google Chrome, Safari) layout technology, meaning that depending on the page being requested by the user, the 360 Browser chooses the optimal layout technology for that webpage.
  • 360 Mobile Assistant - Mobile application store that enables users to download, install and manage Android apps from their PC.
  • 360 Security - international version of mobile antivirus and general security product.
  • 360 Total Security - Qihoo's newest product which cleans and speeds up Windows for global users.[6]

Financials

Qihoo 360's main revenue sources include advertising space on 360 Startup Page, as well as revenue sharing with independent games developers which have published their games on the 360 Mobile Assistant. The revenue breakdown in 2012 was split between the revenue streams as follows: 67% from advertising, 31% from internet value added services and less than 1% from selling third party software. The revenues increased by 96.0% from $167.9 million in 2011 to $329.0 million in 2012. As of January 2014, the market cap is $11.42B.[7]

New Initiatives

In the summer of 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the smartphone market by launching the Battleship phone together with Haier, the large Chinese consumer electronics company.[8] Qihoo 360 said that Haier will provide the hardware while Qihoo 360 will focus on customising the software, albeit the main operating system will be Android. Qihoo 360 received over 220,000 pre-orders for the phone the first day.[9]

Later in 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the search market by launching so.com, thereby directly competing with Baidu, the dominant search engine in China. Qihoo has seen its share of unique visitors quickly grow to 10.52%.[10] "Sou" in Chinese means "search".

Most recently, Qihoo 360 has struck deals with major technology companies Google and Nokia for search and mobile phone partnerships, respectively.

On July 18, 2013, Qihoo launched its new search engine leidian.com, which aimed at increasing its presence in the mobile market.[11]

In early 2015, Qihoo rebranded its so.com search engine to redirect to haosou.com. "Hao" in Chinese means good; Haosou directly translated to English means "good search engine".[12]

Controversies

Qihoo has been described by Forbes as a confrontational and litigious company due to its involvement in various anti-competition lawsuits.[13]

The company was involved in lawsuits with Tencent,[13][14] starting with the 360 v. Tencent dispute, as well as other companies such as Baidu,[15] Emiage,[16] Sogou.[17]

The company has been accused by Anonymous of overstating the volume of traffic to its site in order to attract advertisers.[18]

The AV testing companies, AV-Comparatives of Austria, Germany’s AV-Test and Virus Bulletin of the UK have accused Qihoo of providing anti-virus with Bit-Defender engine for testing, while the consumer version uses Qihoo’s own QVM engine.[19]

Future expansion

In 2013, the company announced they would like to expand into overseas market with English, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, German, French and Korean languages support. Currently they are recruiting languages talents to develop this kind of software.

The firm announced at the end of July in 2013 that it was in early talks to acquire Sohu.com’s Sogou.com search engine for around $1.4 billion.[20]

December 2013, the company increases stake in Brazilian Tech Company PSafe.[21][22]

July 11, 2014, the company has set up a venture capital (VC) fund in Silicon Valley.[23]

References

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External links

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  5. ↑ "Contact Us." Qihoo 360. Retrieved on May 11, 2016. "Address :Building #2, No. 6 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015, China"
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Quote from NASDAQ.com
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  12. ↑ Qihoo 360 Re-brands Its Search Engine So.com To Haosou.com Retrieved March 21, 2016.
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  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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