[5] In the summer of 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the smartphone market by launching the Battleship phone together with the large Chinese electronics company Haier.

Qihoo's share of unique visitors grew to 10.52% of the total search engine market in China.

On 25 May, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian strongly criticized the step, asking the US to "revoke the relevant decision and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs".

[27][28] According to documents released by the Mozilla Corporation in 2016, Qihoo appears to have acquired a controlling interest in the previously Israeli-run Certificate Authority "StartCom", through a chain of acquisitions, including the Chinese-owned company WoSign.

"[33] In October 2020, Mnemonic reported the existence of a backdoor affecting a line of children's watches under the Xplora brand manufactured by Qihoo.

[34] In December 2017, the Chinese Government acted to curtail the widespread webcasting of live security-company-cameras, private webcams, and IP camera footage, voicing concerns of violations of privacy and portrait rights, sanctioning Qihoo.

[35][36][37] In January 2020, a Reddit user reported Qihoo's presence in Samsung mobile phones as a pre-installed storage cleaner in the device settings, from where it sends data packages to Chinese servers.