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Showing posts with label Baidu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baidu. Show all posts

Thursday 18 April 2024

Ernie Bot helps Chinese tech giant Baidu double down on AI push

 

Ernie LLM has emerged as China’s leading AI foundation model with the broadest range of applications. — China Daily

SHENZHEN: Chinese tech heavyweight Baidu Inc says its large language model and ChatGPT-like chatbot, Ernie Bot, has garnered more than 200 million users since its debut in March 2023.

The company said it is ramping up efforts to bolster the commercial application of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

On Tuesday, Baidu showcased a suite of AI models and development toolkits to empower individuals with accessible and easy-to-use tools to create AI applications at the Create 2024 Baidu AI Developer Conference in Shenzhen, Guangdong.

Robin Li, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu, said at the event that the Ernie LLM has now emerged as China’s leading AI foundation model with the broadest range of applications.

LLMs refer to AI models fed with huge amounts of text data for use in a variety of tasks, ranging from natural language processing to machine translation.

Li said the Ernie model has achieved an obvious upgrade with improved performance in code generation, code interpretation, and code optimisation in recent months, and its capabilities have reached a world-leading level.

The inference performance of the Ernie model has improved by 105 times compared with the one launched last March, and its inference cost has been reduced to only 1% of the previous version, he said.

Furthermore, more than 85,000 enterprise clients have used Baidu’s enterprise-level LLM platform, Qianfan, to create 190,000 AI applications.

“AI is catalysing a revolution in creativity. In the future, developing an AI application will be as straightforward as creating a short video. Everyone can be a developer and create,” Li said.

Li also said multimodal LLMs that integrate different types of content like text, images, speech and video into AI models are key to the future development of AI.

This approach has been largely regarded as essential for realising artificial general intelligence, which is a theoretical AI system with capabilities that rival those of a human, Li said.

Charlie Dai, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester, a research firm, said that as one of the leaders in the AI software market in China, Baidu has made substantial progress in the technological evolution of foundation models, which are becoming critical for next-generation AI applications.

He added that the company was expanding its business ecosystem of generative AI technology.

At the event, Li also noted that “the most significant use for large visual models is in autonomous driving systems”.

Baidu’s goal is not just about teaching AI to create video but also about enabling AI to comprehend real-world dynamics and predict future events, which are critical for driving autonomously.

He said the company has utilised extensive data from over 100 million kilometres of testing on complex city roads in China to develop the visual model for its autonomous driving platform, Apollo.

The multimodal LLM is an undeniable future development direction for generative AI technology, said Lu Yanxia, research director at market consultancy IDC China.

She added that the LLMs necessitate a higher demand for data and knowledge in professional fields and for talent that can fine-tune specialised models based on diverse industrial demands.

Lu said Chinese tech companies should pool more resources into improving computing power, algorithms and the quality of data to gain a competitive edge in the global AI chatbot race.

Pan Helin, a member of the Expert Committee for Information and Communication Economy, which operates under the aegis of the Industry and Information Technology Ministry, said the Ernie model made achievements in some specialised application scenarios like AI programming.

Pan said more efforts should be made to bolster the vertical industrial application of LLMs in a wider range of sectors. — China Daily/ANN

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Chinese internet giants speed up development of AI to tap vast market

Chinese internet giants JD.com and Baidu are aiming to speed up the development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs), as they hope to deploy their latest technologies to tap China's massive online market.


Baidu's AI generative product ERNIE Bot amasses over 100 million users as China welcomes a 'battle



Baidu launches enhanced ERNIE 4.0 AI generative bot

unlimited opportunities for new innovations.nbsp;brbrIn his keynote, Li showcased the new ERNIE Bot...

2023/10/17 Source: Global Times | Author: Global Times | Column: Economy

Friday 24 May 2019

How this US-China trade war will remake the world

New world order: People visit the bund in front of Shanghai's financial district of Pudong. The US-China trade war looks like the beginning of a profound break in the global order. As China and the United form two opposing economic and geopolitical coalitions, the rest of the world will be forced to choose. - Reuters

President Donald Trump has long said the goal of his trade policy is simply to get better deals for Americans. But as the trade war intensifies, it seems increasingly likely that his policies will lead to something more: a lasting break with China and a new alignment of global power.

First, consider the evidence for the break.

The current impasse in trade talks was sparked by a sudden change in terms on the part of the Chinese negotiators.

This change likely caught the administration off guard, but Trump’s response is notable: He immediately ramped up tariffs, then announced a ban on business with Chinese telecommunications firm and national champion Huawei Technologies Co.

These actions have backed Chinese President Xi Jinping into a corner and turned the trade dispute into a matter of Chinese national pride.

This limits the possibility not only of a quick resolution, but also of the chances that the Chinese people will accept any concessions to the US.

Trump’s handling of this situation stands in sharp contrast to his negotiating strategy on other issues.

Though the president railed against NAFTA throughout his campaign, he’s touted its replacement as a huge success, even though it is only cosmetically different, and has been willing to suspend his tariffs on Canada and Mexico to ease its passage through Congress.

Likewise, Trump has been more than willing to trumpet his successful negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even though the evidence for such success is thin.

Meanwhile, the president’s tough talk against Europe and Japan for their trade practices, and against NATO allies for their defence spending, has been mostly bluster.

When it comes to China, however, the president is doubling down.

He has encouraged US supply chains to move out of China and established subsidy programmes to cushion farmers from the effects of a protracted trade war.

Which leads to the long-term implications of this battle. A protracted trade war would almost guarantee a global realignment.

Supply chains that run through both the US and China would constantly be subject to disruptions, so global manufacturers would have to decide whether to pursue an America-centric or China-centric strategy.

That’s already the case in the digital sphere, where Chinese restrictions on the Internet divide the world into two parts: that which is served by US tech giants such as Google and Facebook, and that which relies on Chinese firms such as Baidu and WeChat.

China’s threat to cut off US access to rare-earth minerals points to a potential bifurcation in commodities markets as well.

The trend is clear: As China’s economic and geopolitical power grows, countries within China’s sphere of influence will feel increasing pressure to integrate their economies with Chinese supply chains and multinationals rather than American ones.

At the same time, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Tyler Cowen points out, the rise of China is a main driver of populist sentiment in the UK and Australia.

This creates political pressure in those countries for further isolation from China.

In the US, Trump has made it clear that he sees the trade war with China as politically advantageous for him, and he’s probably right.

It’s probably also true that this anti-China sentiment will outlast him.

Break in global order

Add up all these factors, and the US-China trade war looks like the beginning of a profound break in the global order. As China and the US form two opposing economic and geopolitical coalitions, the rest of the world will be forced to choose.

Maybe the European Union can form a third unaligned pole, as France and Germany’s membership in the EU (and the UK’s absence from it) provides them with the negotiating power to avoid falling under the Chinese or American sphere of influence.

Of course, in some ways this type of multipolar alignment would be a return to the past. The dual-superpower world that existed for much of the second half of the 20th century was always an exception, and the era of American supremacy that began after the collapse of the Soviet Union was never going to last.

Until recently, however, a new kind of bipolar arrangement seemed possible: a kind of competitive partnership between China and the US, with the EU playing a supporting role.

The events of the last few weeks have left that looking increasingly unlikely. — Bloomberg Opinion

By Karl W. Smith , a former assistant professor of economics at the University of North Carolina’s school of government.

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Read more : 

The Tech Cold War Has Begun - Bloomberg

China now has no choice but to pursue technological independence, and will burn the cash to achieve it. ... A similar process took place when ZTE Corp. was banned from buying U.S. products after reneging on a deal to settle charges of breaking trade sanctions. ... The U.S. ended up 

 

Another Long March begins

Chinese President Xi Jinping said that "we are on a new Long March now" during his inspection tour of Jiangxi Province this week and encouraged people to gain strength from the spirit of the Long March to overcome difficulties and obstacles, China's state media outlets reported on Thursday.

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Huawei Technologies CEO Ren Zhengfei says Huawei would be "fine" even if Qualcomm and other American suppliers would not sell .
 

Monday 11 February 2019

China's new tech soft power

Foreigners are tapping Chinese innovation to network and build businesses

International market: Foreign visitors to an expo in Nanning, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, evince interest in forestry by-products and pay for them using WeChat Pay. [Photo by Peng Huan / for China Daily]

China's innovations impress foreigners, change startup game, boost confidence

The consumption power of more than 1 million foreigners working or studying in China is disproportionately bigger than their tiny share (0.07 percent) of the total population - and whizzes of the country's homegrown tech ecosystem are sitting up and taking notice, as the economy transitions from export and investment-led growth to a consumption-driven model.

Manufacturers of gadgets, providers of technology-enabled services, and developers of intellectual property like innovative technologies are all vying to make life easier for the relatively small but monetarily significant foreigner community in China.

French engineer Sebastien Bernard, 37, will probably agree. He came to work and live in Beijing four months ago. The first thing he was asked to do by his friends and colleagues was to download and install WeChat, the all-in-one killer app, on his smartphone.

He complied, and his life is much the better for it, he said. As it transpired, Bernard was e-invited to join a WeChat group.

Initially, 15 foreigners chatted with each other and shared their life experiences on the e-group. Gradually, the group grew to a 200-member community of sorts that shared not just useful information like job links or party invitations but, wait for it, e-commerce discount coupons and weekend getaway packages.

Friendly advice sensitized Bernard to other treasures on WeChat. Among many other things, he learned to use the app to order food, book a taxi ride, buy movie tickets, and make digital payments for e-commerce.

Using Chinese apps, some of his friends even play online games, and borrow or lend money using e-credit channels that are redefining inclusive finance.

According to a WeChat report, by May 2017, foreigners in China sent 60 percent more WeChat messages than Chinese users on average per month. They also use WeChat audio calls 42 percent more than Chinese users.

Notably, foreigners in China are good at using different functions or features of WeChat. On average, they use emojis 45 percent more than Chinese users per day. Typically, a foreigner sends 10"red packets" - cash e-gifts - per month. Nearly 65 percent of foreigners who use WeChat use the app's digital payment tool WeChat Pay.

"Here in China, having WeChat and Alipay accounts is like being plugged into the world. The apps include almost every conceivable service that can help make modern life easy," said Bernard.

Agreed Yang Qiguang, 26, a researcher from Columbia University's Tow Center who is pursuing PhD at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.  

"Chinese companies are creating a tech ecosystem that helps everyone, including foreigners, to work and live in a more convenient way."

Forming social networks using e-tools has become integral to modern life, particularly in urban areas - and China's tech ecosystem perhaps performs this function better than any other, by bundling consumption-related conveniences, he said.


"The tech ecosystem here facilitates people, including foreigners, to spend more. It is also boosting the confidence of both domestic and foreign companies operating in China. They know they now have powerful and reliable e-tools like apps to drive sales in a humongous market with more than 1 billion consumers," he said.

That's not all. Yang said China's tech ecosystem is fostering entrepreneurialism. Even foreigners living in China are beginning to use Chinese apps to start up in a variety of fields, including technology, education and entertainment. All this business activity is a long-term positive effect for the Chinese economy, he said.

Yang could well have been speaking about David Collier, 52, a Briton who has founded four startups so far, respectively in the United States, the United Kingdom and China.

Rikai Labs, his WeChat-based e-learning business in China, helps Chinese users to master the English language through proprietary automated software. Collier said every seven years, a big platform shift comes along - from web to mobile apps; from apps to messaging platforms - that creates huge opportunities.

"We chose to base our business on WeChat because it provides a great platform for a knowledge service. You have to build your business where people are spending their time, and the biggest messaging platform of all is WeChat," he said.

"Also, we can use WeChat payment for instant payment, QR codes for marketing purposes and to track user acquisition channels. Now with WeChat's mini programs, we can add interactive games and other features."

There's more. Links to Rikai Labs and related content can be shared socially online. "It provides a very compelling platform with real-time features, social distribution, marketing hooks and monetization," Collier said.

But risks abound too, he said. Platforms such as WeChat have become extremely competitive for startups. "If you don't move at high speed, riding with WeChat is like taking the maglev."

Data, however, suggest that foreigners appear to have an edge over Chinese users in exploiting the local tech ecosystem for small businesses and online social networking, which actually helps businesses directly or indirectly.

A case in point is Baopals, a startup founded by three expatriates. Call it the English Taobao, if you will. Baopals is anchored in Taobao and Tmall, the online shopping platforms owned by Alibaba Group, China's tech giant.

Foreign visitors to an expo in Nanning, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, evince interest in forestry by-products and pay for them using WeChat Pay. [Photo by Peng Huan / for China Daily]

In July 2015, Charlie Erickson, Jay Thornhill and Tyler McNew, all US citizens in their late 20s and early 30s, developed Baopals, a website that helps translate product information on the Chinese Taobao and Tmall into English. In one stroke, the trio thus opened up the astonishing world of Chinese e-commerce, or 800 million products, to non-Chinese consumers in China.

Baopals already boasts 40,000 registered users, with 16,000 of them joining last year alone, doubling the user count in 2017. A Baopals user buys 58 items on average per year, and spends about 2,500 yuan ($368) to 3,500 yuan annually.

In addition to English, the website has Korean and Russian versions, making e-shopping simpler for foreigners in China.

The website is going from strength to strength on the back of the trio's innovations. It has introduced attractive sections like "The Cool, The Cheap& The Crazy". It accepts Alipay, WeChat Wallet and China UnionPay for payments.

Although e-commerce destinations are dime a dozen in China, most of them are in Chinese, and cater to Chinese consumers, so Baopals stands out, said Thornhill.

"Even on Amazon China, the default language is Chinese. When you switch to English, you still see lots of content in Chinese. They just haven't made the effort to serve China's expat population properly," he said.

That gap should spell business opportunities for those looking to start up, he said. "We are also changing the stereotype that Chinese goods are cheap products with low quality," he said, adding that several products including Xiaomi air purifiers and Huawei products are very popular among foreigners.

According to Thornhill, Baopals' revenue comes from service fee paid by shoppers. It charges a service fee of 5 percent of each item's price, plus a small fixed fee based on the item's price - 2 yuan for items priced below 30 yuan, and 8 yuan for items priced above 90 yuan. More than 2.3 million products had been sold by Jan 17 this year, a huge increase from the same period last year.

Given the experience in China, it is clear that homegrown technologies can succeed outside the mainland, he said. "This year is going to be a big year for Baopals, as we'll be launching our global service. Expats leaving China can continue buying things they love here, and foreigners everywhere can discover the treasures of China's online shopping."

Agreed Yang from the Tow Center. China's tech ecosystem, he said, provides foreigners on the mainland with well-rounded platforms to do business not only in China but across the world.

"It may take years for foreigners to build such infrastructure themselves. The time and energy saved during the process can be used for bolstering their own products and business."

It's not just small players such as Baopals that are drawing confidence from their success in China. Even e-payment giants such as WeChat Pay and Alipay, emboldened by their rapid adoption among foreigners in China, are confident of replicating their success worldwide.

Alipay has introduced its payment services, including departure tax refunds, at 10 major international airports in Japan, Thailand and New Zealand. Although the initial goal is to serve Chinese tourists traveling overseas, the larger plan is to roll out Chinese technologies worldwide and gain a global visibility and footprint.

So, it has struck cooperation agreements with local banks and companies in foreign markets, to provide e-payment services. For instance, its partners in Japan are Hida Credit Union and Kyoto Shinkin Bank, which helps attract Japanese users as well. Using such strategies, Alipay has accumulated more than 1 billion users in all, including 300 million outside China.

Sources:  China Daily/Asian News Network

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Friday 7 July 2017

China's Baidu taps Partners for Driverless Car Project

Growth strategy: A fleet of vehicles equipped with Baidu’s autonomous driving technologies conduct road testing in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province. Widely considered the Google of China, Baidu is hoping research into artificial intelligence will create a new generation of products to help revive revenue growth.

https://youtu.be/S-FssvbZFzc



  • Partners include Bosch, Continental, Chinese automakers Company also showed off a voice-activated speaker device

  • Partners include Bosch, Continental, Chinese automakers Company also showed off a voice-activated speaker device

Baidu Inc has enlisted more than 50 partners for its Apollo driverless project, signing up major players in areas from mapping and ride-sharing to automaking to aid the Chinese search giant’s foray into AI-powered vehicles.

The program aims to open up part of Baidu’s autonomous car software in the same way that Google released its Android operating system for smartphones. By encouraging more companies to build products using them, Baidu hopes to fine-tune its nascent systems and overtake rival research efforts by the likes of Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo.

Baidu listed four Chinese carmakers, suppliers Robert Bosch GmbH and Continental AG and technology companies including Microsoft Corp. as part of the Apollo alliance. Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab and mapping systems company TomTom NV are also joining the program, which aims to get fully autonomous vehicles on city streets as early as in 2018.

Widely considered the Google of China, Baidu is hoping research into artificial intelligence will create a new generation of products to help revive revenue growth. It has a stated goal of releasing a driverless car by 2018 with mass production to begin by 2021, but some analysts believe its technology still lags that of competitors like Waymo. At a Baidu conference Wednesday, developers showed off the Chinese search provider’s personal assistant, DuerOS.

Baidu’s shares traded in New York rose 2.7 percent to $184.76 at 10:14 a.m. The stock has risen 12 percent so far this year.

The raft of Apollo agreements unveiled Wednesday at Baidu Create cover virtually every automotive field. Dutch company TomTom said in a statement it will help Baidu with high-definition mapping in the U.S. and Western Europe. Several of Apollo’s members already have separate cooperation agreements in place with Waymo and other driverless car providers.

“As we and our partners contribute to the platform in our areas of specialty, we all gain more, with the results far greater than just our own,” Baidu group president Qi Lu said in a statement.

— Bloomberg News With assistance by David Ramli

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Thursday 14 August 2014

China's Internet giants, Tencent to undercut Alibaba with billion chat app users

 
Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700) faces the prospect of losing its position as Asia’s most-valuable Internet company this year after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) goes public. The Shenzhen-based company isn’t going to concede quietly.

Tencent is taking on Alibaba in almost every business related to the Web, from games to security to search. In the latest escalation of the battle, Tencent is expanding in messaging services and using the technology to drive customers to its e-commerce partners -- in a direct challenge to its rival.

The fight exposes a rare vulnerability for Alibaba, which is planning an initial public offering that may be the largest in U.S. history.

Tencent has an enormous lead in messaging, with about a billion users for its QQ and WeChat products, compared with Alibaba’s last target of 100 million for its offerings.

Tencent is projected to report a 52 percent surge in profit when it announces second-quarter results today, bolstered by messaging.

“Tencent is using Mobile QQ and WeChat to take traffic away from Alibaba and direct people to e-commerce platforms backed by itself,” said Bill Fan, a Hong Kong-based analyst at China Securities Co. “Instant messaging hasn’t been Alibaba’s strong point, but it sees the viral effect that Tencent’s app is having so it’s trying to develop similar services.”


Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., 24 percent owned by Yahoo! Inc., is competing with Tencent... Read More
Tencent’s two technologies let people trade messages over mobile phones and tablets, akin to the WhatsApp service that Facebook Inc. (FB) agreed to acquire this year for $19 billion.

QQ, which began as an instant-messaging service on desktop computers and was repurposed for use on mobile devices, has about 848 million monthly active users. WeChat, known as Weixin in China, has 396 million. (WhatsApp has more than half a billion active users.)

Most Valuable

The success of the messaging services has helped boost Tencent’s market value to about $161 billion, making it the most valuable Internet company in Asia.

Alibaba will compete for that title after it goes public. The latest estimate is that after the IPO the company could be valued at $187 billion, according to a survey of 11 analysts by Bloomberg. Tencent shares declined 0.2 percent as of 9:52 a.m. in Hong Kong trading, while the benchmark Hang Seng Index was unchanged.

Alibaba is trying to close the gap in messaging. In September, it started offering a service called Laiwang. Still, Tencent has continued to expand the features available through its apps to maintain its lead


Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
QQ and WeChat helped triple Tencent’s mobile-game revenue to 1.8 billion yuan in the... Read More

“In the latest version of QQ, we have upgraded it to a platform for food, drinking and entertainment, and the number of cities we cover is also expanding,” said Dowson Tong, president of the company’s social network group that oversees QQ, in a recent interview.

Revenue Boost

Tencent has integrated games more tightly into its messaging services to capitalize on the China online gaming market, which IResearch projects will expand to 225 billion yuan by 2017.

QQ and WeChat helped triple Tencent’s mobile-game revenue to 1.8 billion yuan in the first quarter from the previous three months.

That trend likely continued in the second quarter. Tencent’s profit rose to 5.59 billion yuan in the three months ended June, according to the average of 11 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

That would make the second successive quarter with profit growth of more than 50 percent. Earnings climbed 61 percent in the three months ended March 2011.

QQ was the first iconic product billionaire Ma Huateng created at Tencent in 1999, two years after AOL Inc. (AOL)’s messaging service took off.

As more Chinese accessed the Internet, instant messaging became the most popular online app. Ma restructured QQ’s divisions in 2012 to take it mobile and the effort paid off.


Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
QQ was the first iconic product billionaire Ma Huateng created at Tencent in 1999, two... Read More

Last year, 83 percent of China’s Internet users subscribed to Mobile QQ and 80 percent to WeChat, compared with Laiwang’s 23 percent, according to a survey among almost 4,000 people by Shanghai-based IResearch in June.

Stake Purchases

Tencent is now leveraging its vast user base to go after a bigger share of the China e-commerce market, which IResearch estimates will more than double from last year to 21.6 trillion yuan ($3.5 trillion) in 2017.

The company in March took a 15 percent stake in JD.com Inc., a direct competitor to Alibaba, and folded its own e-commerce assets into the venture. This year, Tencent has also agreed to buy 19.9 percent of Craigslist-like 58.com Inc. and take a 20 percent stake in Dianping.com, a website similar to Yelp Inc. that users review restaurants in China.

Single Click

Tencent has been working closely with JD.com and Dianping, directing traffic from Mobile QQ and WeChat to the websites, said Tong.

Those steps are beginning to yield results. A new single-click link to JD.com from Weixin produced an eightfold increase in daily transaction volumes compared with an earlier access that took two clicks, JD.com said in June. This month a similar integration with JD.com was provided to users of Mobile QQ.

Still, Tencent and its partners are far behind in e-commerce. Alibaba, which operates platforms including Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com that connect retail brands with consumers, accounted for 76.4 percent of total mobile retail transactions in China, according to its IPO filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The fact that Tencent wrapped its e-commerce assets into JD.com shows it wants to limit its investment in the segment, said Yao Yue, a Shenzhen-based analyst with Morningstar Inc.

“Even if Tencent’s instant messaging apps can direct a lot of traffic to JD.com, at the end of the day it still depends on who has the better shopping service, and Alibaba’s Taobao is dominant,” said Yao.

Alibaba hasn’t been able to achieve the same success in mobile messaging so far. The company in 2004 started Aliwangwang, a PC-based instant messenger for buyers and sellers, that is now used for negotiating prices, customer services and delivery notifications on its Taobao marketplace. It also has a mobile version called Wangxin.

Lagging Behind

Laiwang was started by Alibaba to broaden its reach, after billionaire founder Jack Ma alluded to Tencent being ahead in the messaging race at a Credit Suisse conference in March 2013.

“We also invested heavily, but we are not that lucky and not creative, so creative like Tencent, which has WeChat, such a powerful thing,” Ma said at the conference.

Ma has vigorously tried to promote Laiwang and said the company wouldn’t pay bonuses to staff who didn’t get 100 clients for the app before Nov. 30 last year, according to a post on the company’s microblog.

In an attempt to generate revenue from Laiwang, Alibaba said in January it would offer games on the app. A month later Alibaba’s Ma said the company’s achievement on mobile applications wasn’t satisfactory.

Alibaba spokeswoman Florence Shih declined to comment on the company’s mobile strategies, citing pre-IPO restrictions.

Jin Yuan, a Shenzhen mobile phone user, underscores the lead that Tencent has in messaging. Jin has been a QQ subscriber for the past 13 years and says Tencent does a better job of making messaging apps that are easy to use.

“I use QQ to keep in touch with friends I’ve known since the PC age and I use it for a lot of group chats,” Jin said. “I like to use WeChat a lot for sharing information about good places for food.”






Showtime for Alibaba world-wide /div>

Monday 3 September 2012

China launches own mobile browser, Baidu Explorer, tosses currency into clouds

China’s biggest search engine launches its own mobile browser, Baidu Explorer 

China’s biggest search engine launches its own mobile browser, Baidu Explorer
Baidu Campus, Beijing, China. Image by hwanghsuhui, via Wikimedia Commons
Chinese-language search engine Baidu has decided to try and capture the massive mobile internet market in China by launching its own mobile browser, Baidu Explorer. 

Baidu is already the dominant search engine China, which has 538m online users, but with 388m of these users accessing the internet via mobile phones, the company needs to tap into this vast market.

Other mobile products from Baidu include a mobile operating system that appears on low-cost smartphones the company produces with its manufacturing partners. But, with Baidu Explorer, it hopes to reach other smartphone users. The target, according to Reuters, is to have Baidu Explorer downloaded by 80pc of Android users in China by the end of this year.

Though there is already strong competition in the mobile browser market, Baidu claims its browser is 20pc faster than its rivals based on internal tests. It also has strong HTML5 compatibility and users can run HD video through the browser without having to download additional apps or software.

Hopes for 80 per cent penetration by year-end

China’s search-and-plenty-more giant Baidu has flagged a $US1.6 billion cloud investment. The investment, announced with a minimum of detail by CFO Li Xinzhe, will go towards building data centres and hiring staff.

The Chinese search firm also announced the launch of the Baidu Mobile Browser, which it says is designed to compete with Chrome and Safari. It claims a 20 percent performance boost over its rivals based on internal testing.

Briefing Asian journalists last Friday (August 31), Baidu said its mobile browser can play high-definition video without plugins or extra supporting software, according to Reuters.

The company said it hopes that 80 percent of China’s handsets will run its browser by the end of the year. By some astonishing coincidence, 80 percent is also the search market share the company claims in the Middle Kingdom, in the absence of Google, which has clashed with Chinese authorities over search censorship.

During August, Google’s local partner Qihoo launched its own search service, relegating Google to an “alternative search option”.

The Wall Street Journal says Baidu’s cloud plans include remote online storage, as well as API access to its map service which last month overtook Google Maps in China. ®

By Richard ChirgwinGet more from this author