Popular Chinese search engine Baidu will share revenues from advertising sales with Apple as part of a recently made iPhone deal, reports Bloomberg
It’s a deal that’s similar to the one made with Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) for the Android operating system. Earlier this week, Apple announced that they were going to offer Baidu as a search engine choice for iPhone and iPad customers in China. Baidu accrues about eighty percent of search queries in the country.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) also has plans to offer Chinese language support for the growing Siri customer base in China.
Mirae Asset Securities rater Eric Wen said, “Previously they were sharing revenue with websites to bring in search-engine traffic, and now they are sharing it with smartphone manufacturers.”
He also said that he estimates that the popular search engine distributes less than ten perfect of their revenue earned from cell phone sales to the appropriate device makers.
It sounds like Apple and Google are on the right track in hopes of creating lucrative relationships with China’s most popular search engines. This partnership is a win-win situation for all as it allows the phone makers to utilize a popular search engine and it helps the search engine potentially gain more users.
It’s been previously stated that Apple is trying to completely cut ties with Google and that may be part of the reason they are working with Baidu in hopes of eliminating the need for Google’s search engine. Of course, if that’s they case, Apple still has a long way to go.
Earlier this morning at 9:34 am in New York, Baidu’s shares fell 0.4 percent. This doesn’t really indicate anything as Baidu’s trades haven’t really changed much.
China’s growing interest in the mobile market is the result of the recent rise of affluence. Apple is one of the key companies that’s trying to hone in on this potentially lucrative opportunity.
