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Baidu Sees Opportunities from Mobile Phone(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)SHENZHEN, Apr 26, 2006 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --The next big opportunity of Baidu will come from mobile phone, Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu.com, said on April 24 during the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2006. He said that the number of Internet users is only a little over one third of mobile phone users in China. "It is an opportunity as well as a challenge", he said. He predicted that with the application of the third generation of mobile communications technology, denoted as 3G, mobile users become the most potential users of the Internet. It can increase China's Internet users by 100 million to 200 million in two or three years, Robin Li predicted. He said third generation wireless technologies (3G) would be in large scale use during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and this would help to increase the number of Internet users. "If wireless Internet can develop in a favorable environment, 100 to 200 million handset subscribers could become Internet users through 3G wireless technology and be able to enjoy the high-quality services." Li said. According to statistics of the Ministry of Information Industry, China's Internet users is nearly 100 million, the second most in the world only next to the Unied States, while the number of mobile phone users is over 400 millions. Asad Jamal, chairman and CEO of ePlanet Ventures, also said linking mobile telecommunication to the Internet, China's online navigators is expected to grow at an annual rate of 16 percent and hit 230 million by 2010. By replacing traditional telecommunication with on-line service, 3G technology has a bright future in China, said Asad. Despite this, Li is not satisfied with China's Internet development as the Internet is only available to 8 percent of the Chinese population while the percentage of a mature market is over 60 percent. Although China claims to be the No 2 in the world in terms of the number of netizens, the Internet penetration rate in the country is less than 10 percent which means 9 out of 10 people don't have Internet access, he said. The market value of the seven listed companies including Baidu, Tencent, Sina and Sohu adds up to USD 13 billion compared with a market value estimated to be USD 50 billion for Yahoo Japan alone, he said. Li said that in the US the number of Internet users is larger than the number of mobile phone subscribers, and in some Asian countries like Japan and South Korea, these two numbers are similar. However, the ratio in China was 1:3.8. Baidu is a four-year-old company that had just USD 13 million in revenue last year and about USD 1.4 million in profit. But in China, Baidu is the search engine leader, followed by Google, according to online research consultants. The company hired Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse First Boston to take it public. But even the giant investment banks seemed to underestimate demand for its offering. The company is now valued at close to USD 4 billion, and its co-founder and chief executive, 36-year-old Robin Li, is worth close to USD 1 billion, easily making him one of China's richest entrepreneurs. From China Youth Daily, Page 1, Tuesday, April 25, 2006 [email protected] |