Baidu’s New Forked Android Phone: China’s Search Giant Wants To Make Windows Phone, iOS Versions Too

 

Big mobile plans afoot for Baidu, the Google of China that leads in search and has launched a host of other services in the wake of that business. The company today unveiled the first smartphone to be built on its own platform, the Changhong H5018. And while that device is designed on a “forked” version of Android — forked Android devices being very popular in China — Baidu says that it doesn’t want to stop there: the idea is to take its platform, the Baidu Cloud Smart Terminal, to other operating systems like Windows Phone and iOS.

“We want Baidu’s Cloud Smart Terminal to function as a platform that sits on top of all operating systems, such as Windows Phone and iOS,” Kaiser Kuo, a spokesperson for Baidu, told TechCrunch today.

“We are not yet working on a Windows Phone device but the hope is to make one,” he noted, adding that while Baidu plans to leave no stone unturned in its strategy, “some stones are proving to be more recalcitrant than others.” That is likely a nod to Apple and how Baidu could develop its platform on iOS without completely ruining its relationship with the iPhone giant.

Mobile is a big and growing area for Baidu. In Q1, it noted that 20 percent of all of its search traffic is now coming from mobile — it is already the leading search engine in official Android devices with 80 percent penetration, Kuo noted — and he added that the mobile traffic percentage is “growing rapidly”, almost certainly faster than its more mature traffic on fixed Internet devices. At the same time, mobile continues to boom in China, with the country now outstripping the U.S. and the world’s biggest smartphone market.

The Changhong H5018 is Baidu’s big strategy to create a device that will appeal to the less affluent demographic in the country. While the iPhone has proven to be hugely popular in China, it is sold at a premium price and that cuts out large parts of the addressable market that cannot afford it. Kuo notes that at the moment there are some 1 billion mobile users in the country still on feature devices. “It’s a market dominated by feature phones that prevent users from taking full advantage of the Internet,” he said. “There is a tremendous market for low-priced but feature-laden smartphones, and this product fits that niche very well.”

It’s understood that while the basic price for the device will be 1,000 yuan (around $159), it will be sold through resellers that will attach data and calling tariffs to the device — the first named carrier is China Unicom — and subsidize the cost of the handset in the process. The phone will start to sell later this year, the company says.

Part of the reason the device will be priced so inexpensively, Kuo said, is because most of the services that Baidu is loading into the device will be cloud-based. That means the device does not need to have as much processing power built into it. “You don’t need a lot of power, just the ability to connect to the Internet because we are shifting the computing from the terminal back to the cloud,” he noted.

Among the services will be a cloud-based storage service, location-based services and Baidu Map, voice recognition and handwriting-based search input, Baidu Music and services to recharge your call and data credits on the device.

In other respects the device sounds like it will be very much on par with other basic smartphones: 3.5-inch touch screen; 3G connectivity; 3 megapixel camera and a 1400mAh battery.

The phone is being made by Foxconn and that in itself is an interesting development and shows how the manufacturing giant — partner to Apple for the iPhone and iPad among many others — also has ambitions to position itself as a mobile brand in its own right.

It also follows on from an earlier model that Baidu had released in conjunction with Dell, which Kuo described as the “precursor” to the phone launched today.

Baidu’s plans to extend its circle of partners for the phones was also indirectly confirmed by its VP of engineering Jing Wang, who noted in a company statement that “The Baidu Cloud Smart terminal platform is a crucial step in Baidu’s overall Cloud strategy in the mobile Internet sphere…it will significantly lower manufacturing costs for many mobile manufacturers and cooperating partners. Baidu is joining hands with hardware vendors, terminal manufacturers, developers and others in the industry so that everyone along the whole value chain is a winner.”

Although Baidu certainly has a lot of ambition, for now it looks like most of the mobile plan is limited to China. Although Baidu has “dipped its toe” into other countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Egypt, there are currently no plans to offer Baidu’s new phone in markets outside of the mainland. “The whole point is that it is supported by Baidu’s cloud services and all of these are currently in Chinese and not supported outside of China,” he noted. “When we have robust cloud offerings outside of China, only then would it make sense to offer terminals there.”

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Baidu Profits Up 80 Percent, Chinese Search Engine Forecasts More Growth

 

BEIJING -- Baidu Inc., which operates China's most popular search engine, said Friday its latest quarterly profit jumped 80 percent as strong growth in usage of its site helped to drive advertising revenue higher.

Profit for the three months ended Sept. 30 was $295 million, or 84 cents per share, the Beijing-based company said. Revenue rose 85.1 percent to $654.7 million.

The company cited strong growth in user traffic and spending by advertising customers.

"Spending by large customers significantly outperformed our expectations," chairman and CEO Robin Li said in a statement.

The company forecast more strong growth, saying it expects revenues in the current quarter to rise by up to 85 percent.

Baidu has steadily increased its market share since Google Inc. closed its China search engine in March 2010 after saying it no longer wanted to cooperate with the communist Beijing government's censorship rules.

Baidu had a 75.9 percent market share in the three months ending in June, up from 64 percent in the first quarter of 2010, according to Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing. Google's share has declined from 30.9 percent to 18.9 percent but it still is well ahead of third-place Sogou, which has 2.4 percent.

China has the world's most populous Internet market with more than 485 million people online as of the end of June. Beijing encourages Web use for business and education but tries to block access to material deemed subversive or pornographic.

Baidu, long seen as a Google copycat, has launched a series of initiatives including a music download service to expand its appeal and differentiate its brand.

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China Looks at Baidu 

Baidu said Chief Executive Robin Li was visited recently by two senior Chinese officials.

Search Firm Joins List of Internet Companies Under Scrutiny

 

BEIJING—Chinese Internet-search company Baidu Inc. said Chief Executive Robin Li met recently with two senior Chinese officials, the latest in a series of high-level official visits with Web companies as the government tries to tighten control of the sector.

Meanwhile, Qunar.com Information Technology Co., a travel-search company of which Baidu owns a majority stake, said it planned to list its shares in the U.S. next year.

Baidu on Thursday said Chinese propaganda chief Li Changchun and Liu Qi, secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, visited a Baidu exhibition in Beijing on Sept. 5 to learn more about the company's business and to give "important instructions." Both officials are members of the Communist Party's Politburo, which is made up of the party's top 25 leaders. Baidu's CEO was at the exhibition, the company said.

The company said the propaganda chief encouraged Baidu to "continue growing and become stronger, winning honor for Chinese companies." Baidu has expressed interest in international expansion and offers services in Japanese, Thai and Arabic, in addition to Chinese.

A Baidu spokesman declined to provide further details on the visit.

Central-government officials couldn't be reached for comment.

The visits to Baidu and other companies this year underscore the government's growing anxiety over the explosive growth and spreading influence of the nation's Internet sector. Chinese Web companies are required to follow orders from authorities, including requirements to censor their content. Internet companies must walk a fine line, offering services that draw users without angering the central government.

In some cases, the executives' efforts veer into unusual displays of patriotism. Robin Li and other Chinese Internet executives traveled in June to the Shanghai site of the first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party, where they sang revolutionary songs and made speeches praising China's blend of socialism and free-market elements to help celebrate the 90th anniversary of the party's founding.

Last month, Mr. Liu visited online video company Youku.comSina Corp., which operates one of China's biggest Twitter-like microblogging services. According to state media, he told executives that Internet companies should "step up the application and management of new technology, and absolutely put an end" to "fake and misleading information," a term often to mean information not approved by Chinese authorities. Inc. and Web portal

Tencent Holdings Ltd.—which operates China's most popular instant-messaging service, QQ, as well as a microblogging service and a games portal—said in July that China security chief and Politburo member Zhou Yongkang visited its offices. The company said also that Politburo member Liu Yandong and Tianjin Party Secretary Zhang Gaoli appeared at Tencent's Guangdong and Tianjin offices, respectively. Ms. Liu and Mr. Zhang are potential candidates for promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body, in next year's once-a-decade leadership change.

During his visit, Mr. Zhou said "online virtual society's influence on real society is becoming bigger and bigger" and that "the government must strengthen oversight of it in accordance with the law." The visit included an inspection of an office set up by local Web police within the company, according to an article by state-run Xinhua news agency posted on Tencent's website.

Tencent's site quoted Mr. Zhou as saying that Internet companies "must strengthen industry self-discipline" and play a more proactive role in "upholding harmoniousness and stability."

Tencent spokeswoman Catherine Chan said the company often receives central-government officials at its offices. As for the company's cooperation with Shenzhen authorities, she said, "We have a responsibility to protect the security of virtual items on our platforms and will stay in touch with relevant departments to help resolve such user complaints."

Qunar's stock-market listing would come despite investor skittishness in light of market volatility and accounting worries involving some U.S.-listed Chinese companies. Qunar's ties with Baidu, long listed in the U.S., likely would bolster the offering, however.

A Qunar spokeswoman said details aren't yet available on Qunar's IPO plans. Baidu in June said it would make a $306 million investment in Qunar. It didn't specify the size of its stake but said the move made Baidu the company's majority shareholder. Baidu said Qunar would continue to operate as an independent company while cooperating with Baidu in travel-search services.

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Baidu really is China’s Google: Search engine develops a mobile phone OS

 

 

Chinese company Baidu is often referred to as the Google of China. The company operates the largest search engine in China… and now Baidu is getting ready to take another Google-like step. Baidu is preparing to launch a smartphone operating system called Baidu Yi.

Right now the Baidu Yi experience is actually built on top of Google Android software, but future versions could be built from the ground up.

As you’d expect from a smartphone experience designed by a search company, the Baidu Yi phones show a search box prominently. In fact, the search box appears and allows users to search the web even before all the other portions of the operating system have fully loaded.

Baidu Yi also offers users up to 180GB of online storage space for email, photos, contacts, and other data, allowing the OS to run on mobile devices that may not have much local storage.

Baidu isn’t the first Chinese company to announce a mobile operating system with a cloud-based focus. Internet commerce site Alibaba recently introduced Aliyun OS, an operating system designed to run mobile web apps rather than native apps. Like Baidu Yi, Aliyun OS is based on Google Android, but it’s been modified to offer a very different user experience.

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Dell and Baidu team up for tablets, mobiles

A man uses a tablet computer during the Baidu 2011 technology innovation conference in Beijing.

(Reuters) - Dell Inc and China's top search engine Baidu Inc plan to jointly develop tablet computers and mobile phones, targeting the Chinese market dominated by Apple Inc and Lenovo.

China is one of the fastest growing markets for tablets and is home to more than 900 million mobile phone subscribers, but analysts were skeptical that the partnership would unseat Apple as the dominant force in the market.

"I suspect this is just Dell, who has a lot of problems on the mobile and tablet front, grasping at straws to get any kind of publicity that it can to make its product more attractive," said Michael Clendenin, managing director of technology consultancy RedTech Advisors.

"Ultimately in China, I still think it is Apple's game, still for the iPad and iPhone."

Dell declined to give a timeline for the launch of the devices, but local media reported on Tuesday, quoting sources, that it may be as early as November.

Baidu launched a new mobile application platform last week and offered a glimpse of its upcoming mobile operating system, which it hopes will serve a growing number of users accessing the Internet from smartphones and tablet computers.

The company said it already had partnerships with Dell and other device makers and declined to comment on the new tie-up. Dell said the partnership with Baidu involved the company's new mobile platform.

Baidu has built on its dominance of China's search market significantly since Google's high-profile exit last year citing hacking and censorship concerns.

Baidu's Nasdaq-listed shares are up nearly 50 percent so far this year, giving it a market value of around $50 billion.

BUSY SPACE

A Dell-Baidu tie-up would be the latest in a series of developments reshaping the mobile devices market.

Last month, Google said it would buy Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion, putting Google into a lower-margin manufacturing business and pitting it against as many as 38 other handset companies that use Google's Android software.

"Dell has got nothing to lose. They don't have a big mobile presence, so by partnering Baidu, they will probably get some momentum for their mobile products," said Sandy Shen, a research director with Gartner.

Dell has chosen China to launch new products before. In June, Dell said it had chosen to launch its new 10-inch Android tablet in China this summer, passing up on a U.S. and European launch, in a sign of the market's growing importance to the company.

Dell's China sales grew 22 percent in the first quarter while its retail presence in China exceeds 10,000 sales points.

In 2009, Dell announced it will enter the smartphone market starting in China before moving into Brazil.

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Baidu may face tougher rules after state media criticism

 

(Reuters) - Chinese search engine Baidu Inc may face tighter regulations after facing a barrage of criticism from state media over its business practices at a time when it is cementing its dominance of the booming Internet market.

Analysts and various state media have suggested tougher rules could be imposed on the company in the wake of an investigative report by China Central Television (CCTV) which exposed how easy it was to register and promote a fake website on Baidu's search platform and conduct fraud.

Baidu has built its share of China's search market significantly since Google's high-profile exit last year citing hacking and censorship concerns.

"As Baidu becomes an essential part of people's Internet life, we believe the news report could trigger potential government investigations on the paid search business model and prospective regulations to protect customer rights," Wallace Cheung, analyst at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong, said in a research note published on Tuesday. Cheung has an "underperform" call on Baidu.

The half-hour CCTV report showed an under-cover reporter getting advice from an apparent employee of Baidu over how to get around regulations covering pharmaceutical advertising.

Baidu declined to comment on the report.

China's search market grew 62 percent in the second quarter to 4.3 billion yuan ($665.9 million), with Baidu capturing almost 76 percent of the market, data from Beijing-based technology firm Analysys International showed.

"As suggested by some experts, if Baidu cannot discipline itself, authorities should consider stepping in. Just as we do not live for food, Baidu should not just exist for money," said an article published on the People's Daily website, the mouthpiece of China's communist party.

Shares of Baidu have fallen by almost a 10th in the past two days since the report ran, wiping more than $5 billion in market value off the Nasdaq-listed company.

The stock fell 5 percent on Tuesday, after sliding 4 percent the previous session, in a sector-wide selloff. Sina Corp, China's largest Internet portal, fell over 7 percent while Sohu.com fell 5.8 percent on Tuesday, as the broader benchmark index fell 1.2 percent.

Baidu shares are still up nearly 50 percent so far this year, giving it a market value of around $50 billion.

Some analysts said the steep fall in Baidu's share price is likely to be short-term.

"I have not changed my opinion about the company. It's still a buy," Paul Wuh, an analyst at Samsung Securities in Hong Kong, said by telephone on Wednesday.

"The company suggested that it has thousands of sales personnel and some bad behavior is not caught all the time," Wuh said in a research note published on Tuesday.

Wuh said he would only revisit his view and earnings estimates on Baidu if regulators decide to introduce measures "which will limit its ability to monetize its search platform."

CCTV has run negative stories on Baidu before. Last year, it accused the search engine of promoting counterfeit drugs and in 2008 it said Baidu sold links to unlicensed medical sites with unproven claims for their products, causing the firm's shares to tank and its fourth-quarter earnings to sink.

CCTV has also run reports this year exposing counterfeit goods sold on Alibaba Group's Taobao, the country's top e-commerce website.

Chinese media have also become more emboldened in reporting on controversial subjects generally, with attempted state censorship over coverage of last month's deadly train crash widely ignored.

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Baidu Launches Social Music Experience With Major Label Support

 

 

When China search company Baidu began pointing users to copyright-infringing websites via their Baidu MP3 service they came under fire by major labels around the world and now the company is looking to rectify that PR nightmare by launching a new social music service which has received support from major record labels.

Known as Baidu Ting, the program has partnered with Warner Music, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. The new system offers music downloads and streaming capabilities, much like options we’ve seen from services such as Spotify, Pandora and Grooveshark.

Among the sites best features are music browsing and streaming, the ability to download free songs and social networking aspects that includes the ability to create and share personalized playlists and check out popularity charts based on what other users are listening to.

The program does offer a language conversion option for non-Chinese users, just be warned that the program is quite awful and I highly doubt that the Google competitor will allow Google Translate to be used in order to help make their pages more readable outside of their search engines region.

Users can expect to eventually see more than 500,000 songs from the major participating labels, all of which will be free to download in one form or another, however those songs are expected to be uploaded to the service in batches, which means the service is slightly sparse upon launching.

Baidu officials have also promised that the system will continue to develop and add new and improved features as users voice their opinions.

The program is also a smart strategic move for Baidu as the term “MP3″ now accounts for less than 1% of the search engines traffic, a sharp decrease from the days when MP3 downloads were a popular internet feature, an option that has largely been dwarfed by music sharing services which have replaced MP3 downloads with streaming capabilities.  In comparison the question and answer service Baidu Zidao accounts for 8% of all site search traffic.

With China mobile earning $3.1 billion off music rights downloads  in 2010 it’s simply an area that Baidu can’t afford to ignore.

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