Popular Chinese Search Engine Makes Mobile Browser

Baidu Inc., the most popular search provider in China, just launched its own mobile browser. Along with the announcement, the company said that it intends to invest in a cloud center that will help handle the increased amount of traffic that will flow due to the increase in mobile phone Internet bandwidth usage.

Despite currently taking the biggest lead in China's Internet search ecosystem, Baidu has had problems tackling competitors - Tencent and UCWeb - in the race to tap into the mobile market. This is perhaps not going to slow the company down since China has the largest Internet user base on the planet. To give a bit of perspective on the extent of China's Internet market, its mobile Internet usage is increasing at a rate that's twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

Baidu claims that the mobile browser it launched will support quicker and easier Internet connectivity as well as quicker downloading. Web apps will also be supported via the browser, allowing the phones to grip onto more powerful utilities that users can interact with. The cloud computing center mentioned earlier that it has been on the down-low, but we do know that it will be used for the purpose of helping spur the Baidu mobile revolution.

Robin Li, chairman of Baidu, said, "The cloud-supported mobile Internet is the focus of the next wave of innovation." Indeed, this will be one of the biggest experiments conducted in mobile Internet's history; China has more than half a billion people online and the trend is pushing the country's citizens to get connected at faster rates. This information comes from the China Internet Network Information Center. On the mobile scene, China has almost 400 million users, meaning that an enormous proportion of people who go online at home also participate on the Internet while on the go.

So far, Baidu is governing China's search market, putting even the enormous mammoth of Google in second place, with a market share of 78.6 percent. This gives it a sanguine advantage above all other efforts in China to touch the mobile market. Browsers in Mandarin will be the next big thing.

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