Baidu is planning an expansion into more overseas markets, as the Chinese search engine looks to capitalize on its booming domestic business.
The company, which already has a Japanese-language search engine in Japan, is currently in the process of identifying new markets to target next according to Baidu Inc senior vice president Shen Haoyu. He was speaking at a technology event in Beijing.
According to Shen, Baidu was setting up a multi-language platform to get the company ready once it decided to go to a market.
Shen added that the company did have a global aspirations and a lot of the company’s growth in the next 10 years would come from overseas expansion.
He added that Baidu also saw China’s fast-growing mobile internet market as “a huge opportunity”.
The number of China’s mobile internet users stood at 303 million at the end of last year, as against its total world-leading online population of 477 million, official data show.
He added that Baidu also saw China’s fast-growing mobile internet market as “a huge opportunity”.
The number of China’s mobile internet users stood at 303 million at the end of last year, as against its total world-leading online population of 477 million, official data show.
According to the Chinese government, the country had more than 900 million mobile phone subscribers at the end of April, up from 859 million as of end-2010 which means the numbers could see explosive growth.
Shen expressed confidence that Baidu would eventually achieve the same dominance of the mobile search market as it has in the overall search market.
“We are not there yet, but I think our share is growing… very fast,” Shen said.
Baidu had 36.1 per cent of China’s diverse wireless search market in the first quarter of 2011, as against its 75.8-per cent share of the overall search market, figures from research firm Analysys International reveal.
Meanwhile Google remains Baidu’s top rival in China. Google had to reduce its presence in China follow a dispute with Beijing last year over censorship and allegations of cyberattacks. However Google is still confident about its market prospects.
“Competition is just reality. It’s there,” John Liu, a vice president of Google, told the forum.
“You just focus on users, make them feel your search engine … With a lot of things put together, as long as a user learns it — you use it — market share will come and business will come back,” he said.
According to Analysys data, Google had 19.2 -per cent share of the search market in China in the first quarter of the year, which was down from 19.6 per cent in the last three months of 2010.
The company further said Baidu’s market share rose to 75.8 per cent from 75.5 per cent, while Microsoft Bing had less than 1 per cent market share.
Meanwhile, Baidu said it may expand its partnership with Microsoft Corp as it prepares plans to for extending its services beyond its home market.
The company said it would not rule out further collaboration with Microsoft, with which it has an existing agreement on the Bing search engine in China Shen says.
