Intel Corporation (INTC) To Share A Lab With China’s Baidu

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If you want to do anything in China you had better have Baidu.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU), China’s most visited website and most popular search engine.

Intel Corporation (INTC) To Share A Lab With China's Baidu

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) understands this and should be applauded for its newest Chinese venture, a joint innovation lab with Baidu.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) aimed at getting Chinese developers to back its products. This lab is a large part of the agreement Intel signed with Baidu yesterday, the focus of the lab will be developing software for China’s mobile Internet market and Intel will provide access for developers to their PCs, tablets, and mobile devices in order to test and port products for each company’s platforms.

“If you are a developer, you will now have more choices of platform and more opportunities in business,” said Christos Georgiopoulos, Intel general manager for developer relations and a man whose name could only be more Greek sounding if he was named Zeus.

Lenovo Group Limited (PINK:LNVGY) (HKG:0992) earlier this year unveiled its K900 smartphone, which is designed with Intel’s new “Clover Trail+” processor. This, however, is the exception along with others rather than the rule. While China is the world’s largest smartphone market, most of those smartphones and tablets are designed and manufactured with competitor ARM Holdings chips which are at least viewed as more efficient in their power use.

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is also providing software tools to Chinese software developers in the hopes that it will see Chinese apps designed with voice-command features along with facial-recognition that really stand out and make Intel a force again in the Chinese market.

There is little question that this deal with no financial terms disclosed is a large investment for Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) which is betting on a big payout.

In 2011, the Chinese search giant launched its own Android-based mobile platform, now called Baidu Cloud, but has not seen it take off as they had hoped. Presently only six smartphones are sold with this platform pre-installed.

That is not going to do it as Baidu.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) strives to become a go-to mobile destination, a direction we have seen a number of company’s adopt in recent months due to Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s near instant successes in the mobile market.

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