Building iQIYI's Mobile Middle Platform: Architecture, Decoupling, and SaaS Enablement

This article summarizes a talk by an iQIYI researcher at the ArchSummit Global Architecture Summit, describing how iQIYI built its Mobile Middle Platform.

Definition and significance of a middle platform : It sits between the front‑end (customer‑facing) and the back‑end (core services), offering a stable yet flexible enterprise‑level capability‑reuse platform. Four core ideas are emphasized – the enterprise‑level scope, the capabilities it carries, the value of reuse, and the platform as the main manifestation.

iQIYI App Middle Platform : Beyond the main iQIYI App, the company also runs products such as iQIYI Comics and iQIYI Knowledge. A middle platform is needed to address professional depth, human‑resource efficiency, and user‑experience consistency across these products.

Evolution timeline : Before 2018, four iQIYI apps shared a single codebase. After 2018 each app got its own team and isolated resources, prompting massive component decoupling. In 2019 the company began constructing the Mobile Middle Platform, and it now aims to expose reusable capabilities as SaaS for internal subsidiaries.

Team size and iteration efficiency : Small teams (<10 people) rely on individual versatility; medium teams need component‑based weak coupling; large teams require parallel iteration but face exponential refactoring costs. Early decoupling is therefore crucial.

QMAS portal (QIYI Mobile Application Studio) : Provides a unified entry point, permission management, documentation, and SDK discovery, solving the “where is the service/SDK/doc?” problem for new apps.

Benefits of QMAS : One‑stop service access, unified decision control, and a consistent browsing experience that masks platform differences. It also includes an SDK management platform that bridges providers and consumers, enabling easy publishing, testing, and discovery of SDKs.

Mobile app scaffolding : Offers a ready‑made set of common functions, business components, and backend services. It dramatically improves development speed, cutting new‑app setup time from about two months to two weeks.

Framework components : iQIYI leverages many cross‑platform frameworks (H5, mini‑programs, mini‑games, React Native, Flutter). The Qigsaw framework, inspired by Google’s App Bundles, replaces the Play Core runtime with a custom CDN‑based solution, supporting seamless domestic/international dual‑track deployment.

High‑availability and performance : The APM system monitors crashes, ANR, frame rates, and provides real‑time, big‑data coverage. A full‑link monitoring platform collects end‑to‑end logs and traces, visualizes bottlenecks, and aims to locate incidents within 20 minutes. A dedicated mobile log platform records critical logs and uploads them automatically on exceptions.

Network foundation components : An HTTPDNS gateway and a custom Protobuf protocol reduce SSL overhead, resist hijacking, provide stable long‑connections, and enable fast reconnection without the TCP three‑way handshake, acting as a universal gateway for all services.

In summary, the mobile middle platform is a strategic technical trend that, while not universally applicable, offers valuable architectural insights for architects and engineering managers across data, business, and mobile domains.