BAIDU PLANS JAPANESE FORAY
By Mure Dickie in Hong Kong
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Baidu.com, the Nasdaq-listed online search provider, plans to enter the Japanese market next year in a rare and ambitious foray abroad for a Chinese internet company.
The plan to take on the entrenched Japanese search services of Yahoo and Google also marks the most dramatic dilution yet of Baidu's past policy of concentrating its efforts on the large Chinese market.
Robin Li, chairman and chief executive, told the Financial Times last year that Baidu's focus was key to success against the resources of US rival and global search leader Google.
“We are a much more focused company: we only do one thing, which is Chinese search,” Mr Li said then. “I'm quite confident that by focusing on the one thing, we can do it better than anyone else.”
Yesterday Mr Li cited Baidu's strength in non-English search and Japan's high internet penetration as reasons for the decision to establish a Japanese search service.
Baidu said “industry experts” had hailed the move as “news to rouse the spirits of all Chinese internet companies”.
The company said: “It shows that Baidu has already sprung on to the global stage and begun vying with the strongest multinationals in the world's highest technology sectors and in the international market.”
Baidu said it had already conducted more than six months of “extensive research” into Japanese language search technology.
However, Baidu could find it hard to establish a competitive advantage against Google's Japanese service and Yahoo, which leads Japan's search market. Although both use Chinese characters, Japanese and Chinese written language are very different and Japanese online habits also differ from Baidu's home market.
In Japan, Baidu will also lack the indirect support of Chinese internet censors, who have disrupted or blocked Google's services.
Baidu declined yesterday to say whether it hoped to establish a wholly-owned business in Japan or to team up with a local partner.
