Google and Baidu eye Chinese mobile market

With recent research reports saying that the Chinese mobile search revenues will surpass PC search revenues in a few years, Google and Baidu have stepped up work on providing mobile search services, according to media reports.

Wallace Cheung, an analyst at Credit Suisse, as quoted by China Daily, said: “Everything is growing very fast, but who is going to make money?. The (mobile search) market is so diverse, even globally there is no sure business model yet.”

In an interview to Reuters, Li Yinan, Baidu's chief technology officer, said: “For the mobile search market, the number is still small but the growth potential is extremely high. It is an important area.”

With mobile services and Smartphone penetration reaching high in China, Tencent Holdings, a holding company engaged in the provision of internet and mobile value-added services, is reportedly also eying the Chinese mobile search market.

Alan Hellawell, a Deutsche Bank analyst, said: “We expect China's mobile value-added services industry to have another two to three years of rapid growth with a compound annual growth rate of 22 percent from 2009 to 2012. The deployment of 3G networks will enable a far broader and deeper market for mobile applications.”

Baidu dealt Google a blow as it has said that many of its popular services will be pre-installed on next-generation mobile phones from a local carrier, reported Business Center.

Meanwhile Baidu, a Chinese language internet search provider, has entered into a strategic partnership with China Unicom (Hong Kong) to provide wireless search for China Unicom's 3G mobile subscribers.

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