Apple to make Baidu the default search engine on Chinese iPhones
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Baidu is already the most popular web search engine in China, having gained market share hand over fist after Google decided to abandon the Chinese mainland and move its search servers to Hong Kong. Apple most likely sees this as a way to try and increase their popularity in the Chinese mobile phone market, where they have lagged far behind the many forms of Android (both forked and official). The fact that it will not provide Google with a way to grow its market share of Chinese mobile search is in all probability just a bonus.
Despite having smaller market share in China than elsewhere, the sheer size of the Chinese user base lead to the territory growing to become Apple’s second largest market last quarter, behind only the United States; as such Apple and Google undoubtedly view China as an extremely important battle field in the ongoing war over mobile market share.
According to Bloomberg’s sources the announcement could come as soon as next week, perhaps during WWDC. As an interesting quirk of history, way back in 2010 none other than Motorola chose to replace Google with Baidu as its default search engine on its Android smartphones; presumably they reversed course at some point!
As you might expect, no one at Apple, Baidu, or Google wished to comment on the story.
source: Bloomberg
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9 Comments
6. taco50 (banned) posted on 08 Jun 2012, 02:00 0 3
Ignorant comment if you know anything about China
8. Mark.J.Linskiy posted on 08 Jun 2012, 02:33 1 0
Oh trust me, I rather leave the Ignorant comments to you. Since that is practically all of your comments, right? You're always so ready to criticize anyone or thing when it comes to someone or something taking a bite out of your beloved fruit. Like I said, good luck :).
11. Non_Sequitur posted on 08 Jun 2012, 07:50 0 0
They USED to use Google in Chinese iPhones, didn't they? If Apple had known anything about China, they would've used Baidu in the first place.
I will rejoice and throw flowers in the wind the day you stop commenting.
2. mercorp posted on 07 Jun 2012, 23:46 2 1
Baidu will soon be bought over by apple...
Then,no more free mp3s and movies...:-(
3. Lucas777 posted on 08 Jun 2012, 00:52 0 1
why the heck would apple want to buy baidu? the search market is already quite crowded and it doesnt offer any real benefits for apple-- they arent in the advertisement business unless you count iad.. which honestly is close to nothing
5. adi4u4882 posted on 08 Jun 2012, 01:56 1 0
Which they can't when Google is there.
9. darktranquillity posted on 08 Jun 2012, 02:44 1 0
Wow apple and peoples republic together. Hypocrisy with pseudo democracy, best combination.
