LeEco has had a rather interesting launch in the US. After coming to the US and launching the Le S3 and Le Pro3, the company came out and announced that they expanded to quickly and ran out of money. Well since then they have gained a few investments to help them continue their expansion, and now they have gained another one from Sunac China Holdings. LeEco is getting an investment of 15 billion Yuan, which is equal to about $2.2 billion USD. This investment from Sunac China Holdings came at a great time, as the other investments that LeEco has received were aimed at keeping their electric vehicle unit open and running. Now this new investment is going to help keep their mobile division up and running, which should bring in profit sooner than their electric vehicle, the Le See.
While gaining an extra 15 billion Yuan is definitely good for LeEco to keep their mobile division open, it still doesn’t fix their problem of expanding to soon. The company is going to need to find a way to halt expanding, at least a little bit, until they can afford to expand into other markets. LeEco, at this point, is still working to expand in the US, while they did put their Asia-Pacific expansion on hold. It makes sense to continue the expansion in the US, seeing as the US market is a pretty large one and there aren’t a lot of competitors from LeEco’s homeland here just yet (like Xiaomi, Meizu, etc).
LeEco is a pretty popular company in China, in fact they are known as the “Netflix of China” for having a popular video streaming service. Their other products serve as tools to watch these movies and TV shows that they are streaming. For instance their smartphones allow you to watch their movies and TV shows, the same goes for their TV’s and even electric cars. So they likely aren’t making a whole lot of cash on hardware here, as they are hoping to rope customers into using their services. Something that has worked well for Amazon over the past few years with their Fire TV and Fire Tablet lineup.