Sina Tech has learnt from the investment community that Qihoo 360 has decided to invest about CNY 5 billion in full acquisition of a smartphone company located in Shenzhen, but the source refused to disclose the name of the vendor.
According to the newly revealed Q3 financial report of Qihoo 360, there are more than $1.6 billion cash reserves in its account. From the Weibo of Zhou Hongyi, the chairman of Qihoo 360, it has several interactions with mobile phone vendors in the past six months, such as OnePlus One, Meizu, ZTE and others, earlier reports also said that Qihoo 360 should seriously consider the investment in Coolpad, an mobile phone vendor also located in Shenzhen.
Relevant personage in PR department of Qihoo 360 said they didn’t know about that. Qihoo 360 had cooperated with numerous mobile phone vendors in 2012 and launched the "360 special devices", while 360 provided marketing resources and softwares, the smartphone vendors provided mobile phones. But 360 and Xiaomi had several conflicts in smartphone business and even triggered a large-scale war of words.
If the news is true, this will be the largest acquisition that China Internet industry conducted to traditional mobile phone vendors.