Telecom Lead Asia: In an attempt to enter into the
growing and competitive mobile-device field of China, search engine Baidu is
all set to launch a low-cost smartphone running on its newest mobile operating
software.
The handset is being made in association with Foxconn
International and China Unicom Ltd., but will be launched under a separate
brand. The phone will be priced under CNY1,000.
The low-cost smartphone will run the company’s Baidu
Cloud software, which gives users 100 gigabytes of storage on which they can
store documents and other digital files and share them among different
computers and devices.
The software also offers Baidu applications such as its
maps and licensed music services, the person said.
Baidu has hired more than 1,000 engineers to help
it build its mobile offerings. The new Baidu Cloud operating platform is
designed to target the growing number of Chinese consumers who use mobile
devices to access the Internet to use Baidu’s services.
Last year, Baidu released Baidu Yi operating platform.
Baidu Yi was featured on a smartphone made by U.S.-based Dell, but the phone
didn’t see success mainly due to its high price and more dominant brands such
as Apple and Samsung Electronics.
Baidu holds 78.3 percent of China’s online search market
by revenue; its mobile search service gets 35 percent of total unique website
requests, according to research firm Analysys International.
Baidu has dominated online search in China since
U.S.-based Google moved its mainland China offices to Hong Kong in 2010 amid
its concerns about censorship and hacking.
