Baidu, China’s leading search engine announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement with China Unicom to provide wireless search. China Unicom is the country’s second largest cell phone operator with 141 million mobile users. China Telecom, the largest cell phone operator has 450 million users.
In May, Baidu reached a deal to provide search service in a value-added service platform run by China Telecom. Baidu services, including text, image, MP3 and news search, will be installed on China Unicom’s 3G mobile phones. It will also provide search services for China Unicom’s mobile Internet websites. China Unicom also plans to launch the iPhone in China this month.
According to Analysys International, Baidu leads with over 60 percent of the search market share but Google is currently leading China’s mobile search market with 26.6 percent compared to 26 percent for Baidu.
“We hope that Baidu’s cooperation with major telecom providers in China will accelerate the development of 3G services and allow us to provide the rapidly growing population of mobile search users better access to information,” said Ren Xuyang, Baidu’s vice-president, in a statement yesterday.
David Temple
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Good move by the guys at Baidu. I am sure China politics got into this to prevent Google to have a shot at such partnership.