Thursday, August 27, 2009

Baidu Union revenue sharing changes

Baidu Union will share between 30% and 50% of
ad revenue with sites containing Baidu search
functions. The exact percentage depends on the
cooperation model, traffic, effect and duration.
The current scheme sets the sharing at 40% if
the site records between 5000 and 20,000 daily
searches and 50% for more average daily searches.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Phoenix Nest likely to boost revenue this quarter

as per the CEO, Yanhong Li, speaking at Baidu World.

Piper Jaffray has come out with a positive note on
Baidu, pointing out the news from Baidu world would
boost the stock this week.

Baiduworld: x2c strategy, mobile search, Phoenix Nest

Li Mingyuan, GM of Baidu's (Nasdaq: BIDU)
e-commerce division, announced the internet
company's new, x2C-based e-commerce strategy
at today's 2009 Baidu World Conference, as well
as Baidu's new "Feng Ming (Phoenix Call) Plan,"
"Fangzhou (Ark) Plan," and "Bretton Woods Plan."
Li says the "Ark" plan and "Bretton Woods" plan
primarily target the "C" (consumer) portion of
Baidu's market; the former aims to create a complete
online shopping experience, while the latter relates to
Baidu's ongoing efforts to perfect the credit system
for its "YouA" B2C platform. The "Phoenix Call" plan
is a portion of Baidu's x2C strategy, primarily
targeting the "x" part of the equation. Under the plan,
YouA will attract a number of online stores and
individual brands, as well as enterprises capable of
providing superior products and services.

Ren Xuyang, VP of marketing and business development,
said that mobile internet is Baidu's next strategic focus.
Baidu's current mobile offerings are based on existing
products such as its online search and SNS, which it
modifies for use on handsets. Baidu has established
strategic relationships with China Unicom and
China Telecom to pre-install Baidu's search services on
handsets from vendors including Nokia, Samsung and
Lenovo.

Baidu unveiled its intelligent search engine, called the
"One Box" (Chinese name: Frame Calculator) at the
Technology Innovation Conference on August 18,
TechWeb reports. Baidu CEO and Chairman Robin Li
said that the new function returns links to the most
appropriate applications and content providers rather
than returning literal word-matches. For example, if a
person searches for "uplifting mp3," the engine will
return links to music providers, Li said.


Saturday, August 15, 2009

New stats platform, maps on Q&A channel

Yanhong Li plans to announce a new statistics
platform, "Si nan" (compass) at the Baidu Technology
Innovation Conference, to be held in Beijing from
August 18, reports National Business Daily.

Baidu Knows now allows users to include maps in
answers on the interactive Q&A channel.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Mecox Lane sues Baidu

Shanghai-based Mecox Lane International Mailorder
has sued Baidu and online and telephone-based men's
clothing retailer Vancl in the Pudong District People's Court
for compensation of RMB 500,000 each, reports
CCW.com.cn. Vancl has usurped the ad-space on
Baidu searches of Mecox Lane's Chinese
company name and web address, m18.com.

Post bar to be managed as a separate department

Baidu Enterprise Marketing Director Shu Xun will serve
as general manager of the department in charge of
product R&D, service operation, brand promotion and
business models.

Youa offers fourth channel - Beauty products

The previous three are women's, digital products,
and home-related.

Around 100,000 customers use Phoenix Nest

at least for some keywords. That is roughly 60%
of the total. Also Baidu is likely to announce its
move into B2C at the Baidu Technology Conference
on Aug 18th.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

User share at 74.5%: iResearch

... for Q2 09, up 1.5 percentage points from Q1.
Google's share falls 1.1% to 19.8. In rural China,
Baidu is about the only player. Some people
use Google China for English searches.

Analysys found a rise of 2.6% for Baidu and a fall
of 1.5% for Google in Q2, from Q1. Comscore believes
Baidu is now the #2 ranked search engine in the
world, ahead of Yahoo. Comscore's number looks to
be inaccurate for China, underrepresenting the
total search volume.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Promoting Samsung products via e-commerce site

Baidu will provide a suite of B2c services on youa to
promote Samsung's online shop: samsungshop.com.cn.
Similar agreements with other major vendors are
expected in the near future.

Search market share at 81.9% per DCCI

The figure for the 08 DCCI survey was 69%. Google
China is now second, and Tencent's Soso, third. On
average, in H1 09, China's approximately 350 million
web users logged on twice a month onto baidu.com.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Verifying credibility of brick-and-mortar stores on Youa

Sellers who provide after-sales service via offline
stores will have to provide business and property
licence info, and pictures of the physical store.

UBS upgrades from Sell to Neutral

PT from $150 to $380.

The analyst, Wenlin Li, compares the average spending
of a Baidu customer, $2500/year, to that of Google,
$16000/year. Google's margins rose as its business
scaled, and the same is likely for Baidu as well. Li is
estimating 2009 revenue of 4.5 billion RMB, with 2010
and 2011 estimates being boosted by 33 and 38%. Gross
profit is also being revised up, 60% each for the next 2
years. Net profit revised up by 40%. Largely because
Phoenix Nest did not have the detrimental impact the
analyst had feared.