15 February 2015 – Global Marketing News
Baidu reorganising into 3 groups
Baidu has announced that it will be reorganising its business into three groups.
The existing businesses will be restructured to create a mobile services group, a search group, and an emerging businesses group.
The mobile services group will include Baidu’s cloud infrastructure, as well as its smart-car operating system and taxi app projects.
The search group will focus on improving Baidu’s search engine, including its highly praised voice and image search functions.
And its emerging businesses group will focus on growing Baidu’s audience. Currently its user-base is overwhelmingly based in China, but Baidu hopes to grow internationally and become a global company to rival Google.
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1 in 4 global online purchases are now via mobile
A report has found that over one quarter of global online purchases now take place on mobile.
The report, which was based on an analysis of 8 million global transactions, found that in the fourth quarter of 2014 26% of all online transactions took place on mobile, up 11% on the previous quarter.
Out of these mobile transactions, almost 60% were made on smartphones, compared to around 40% on tablets.
Digital goods were most likely to be bought by smartphone, whereas retail goods were most likely to be bought by tablet.
The report also identified the countries where cross-border purchases were most prevalent: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Holland, Ireland and Switzerland. In contrast, shoppers in France, Italy and Poland tended to buy from merchants based within their own countries.
Facebook active usage is declining
Research conducted by Global Web Index has revealed that Facebook’s popularity is falling in terms of active usage. The most dramatic reductions were in the 16-34 age group and in the Asia-Pacific region, where a 12% decrease in active usage was observed.
Despite the fall of Facebook, local social networks such as WeChat and Qzone remained popular in Asia, showing that social media per se is not in decline in the region.
Worldwide, Pinterest and Tumblr were the fastest growing social sites of 2014, with both networks showing increases in active usership of almost 100%, and Snapchat was the fastest growing social app, with membership increasing by almost 60%.
Japanese app shows local flu figure trends
And finally, there’s an app in Japan that allows users to see the number of flu cases in their local area, according to the website The Japan News.
The app tells users the daily number of flu cases in their prefecture, displays this data on a graph, and can even compare this year’s infection figures to last year’s.
If the risk of infection reaches a high level – as calculated by a range of factors such as the number of cases, temperate and humidity – then the app gives the user an alert.
The technology allows users to make an informed decision about whether to take precautions, such as wearing a face mask, before venturing outside, claim the app’s developers.
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