Determined to put more homegrown products into the pockets of China’s 1 billion mobile subscribers, Baidu is launching a new low-cost Android smartphone for China Unicom. Baidu is the Chinese search engine giant that is often called “the Google of China.” The company launched a smartphone in partnership with Dell late last year, but this time it is partnering with local handset vendor Changhong. The Changhong H5108 is manufactured by Foxconn and will sell for about $158. Baidu’s previous offering, the Dell Streak Pro, cost nearly three times that much and was targeted at business users.
As a software company, Baidu is focused on the Changdong H5108’s platform, called Baidu Cloud. The platform is built to run cloud-based apps and to direct users to Baidu’s search and storage services. Having integrated Baidu Cloud with Android, the company says it wants to eventually do the same with iOS and Windows.
Baidu will compete head-on with Samsung in the lower end of the Chinese smartphone market. Both companies see huge opportunity in upgrading hundreds of millions of Chinese feature phone users to smartphones, and both are entering this market with customized versions of Google’s Android operating system. Meanwhile Google itself is waiting for Chinese authorities to approve its proposed $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility. Approval would clear the way for Google itself to enter this and other handset markets.
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