All sorts of corporations and individuals have agreed that the mobile market is key in China; many more people can afford Internet-enabled phones than PCs. Baidu may be onto something, then, as it intends to have an app loaded onto phones before they’re made available for sale.
If Baidu can get a solid mobile app in front of a lot of people right from the start, it’ll decrease the odds of them ever turning to Google. Given how Baidu’s doing so well in terms of desktop market share, it might even win converts.
And Baidu Palm, as the application’s known, should be plenty useful. Owen Fletcher reported that, even in beta, it “hooks users into its search, message board and question-and-answer online services. It also has a new quick-upload feature for pictures taken with a phone.”
Another point in Baidu’s favor: things are looking pretty good on the distribution side. Although no deals have been announced, Baidu’s already known to have relationships with a number of communications companies, including China Telecom and China Unicom.
It seems that we’ll soon see another big salvo in the Google-Baidu war, then. Don’t count on Google taking too long to respond.
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