LeEco Group from China has officially announced that it is about to acquire Vizio Inc. The former will pay $2 billion in cash to buy the latter.
LeEco is one of the largest technology and entertainment company in China, and Vizio is a manufacturer of consumer electronic based in the USA. This deal will give LeEco access the large customer base of Vizio in America and make it easy for the former to set its foot in the US market. After the acquisition, Vizio will function as an independent daughter company of the LeEco group.
All the workers of Vizio will be working as before with the exception of William Wang, the CEO and founder of the company. Wang will take on to lead Inscape, which is being spilled off from Vizio. Inscape is the data business wing of the American company. Around 49 percent of the share of Inscape will be owned by LeEco, while Wang will own the other 51 percent. The acquisition is presumed to be completed by the end of this year.
LeEco is one of the largest online video streaming company in China. The company owns an array of different types of businesses including Movie Production House, consumer entertainment electronics, smartphones, e-commerce and even electric cars. Till now, the company has launched a total of six smartphones in countries like China and India.
The Le Group also has a number of services and products like the LeTV Music, LeTV Sports, Smart Television, LeTV Cloud Computing, etc. The company has been aggressively expanding into almost every category of business related to technology.
Vizio is one of the top consumer electronics brands in America. It is primarily known for its popular line-up of Smart Televisions. The company also sells high-definition speaker sets, Computer monitors, and various other TV accessories. Vizio has the second largest share in the television market of the US. It runs just behind Samsung with more than 29 percent market share by its range of smart TVs.
This deal highlights LeEco’s ambition to become a truly global entity. Owning Vizio puts the Chinese company right into the US consumer electronics market. LeEco is also producing films and TV shows in China. This will make the company both produce contents for entertainments and also sell gadgets that will be needed by the consumers of those contents. LeEco currently produces around 10 to 15 films per year in China under the name of Le Vision Pictures.
