Chinese search giant Baidu is planning to monetize its mobile search traffic and social media platforms this year in an effort to boost its growth in the Internet and mobile space.
At present, mobile services make up only a small percentage of Baidu’s total revenue. By stepping up its efforts to generate revenue from mobile services, the search company plans to tap into China‘s lucrative mobile Internet market. Other than mobile, Baidu is also pursuing a strategy to monetize its social media platforms.
“We do think mobile will become a very important channel to distribute our products and that has increasingly become true over the past quarter. And we think during the coming year, mobile will represent an ever larger percentage of our total traffic. In the past, we have not spent any resources in monetizing the mobile traffic. But starting from this year, we will do something to figure out how to better serve our customers on our mobile platform,” said. Robin Li, chief executive of Baidu, as reported by the Reuters.
Baidu has a dominant position in China’s Internet search market , where search giant Google has been unable to operate due to censorship laws. Baidu’s market share in the fourth quarter was 78.3%, according to a data from Beijing-based research firm Analysys International. Analysts expect Baidu’s earnings to increase by 54% in 2012.
Apart from boosting its mobile and social media service, Baidu is also expanding its international business. After setting up an office in Japan in 2007, the search engine has opened a new branch in Brazil.
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