China's Biggest Internet Company is Entering Smartphone Market: Baidu

According to reports, Baidu, China's largest internet business, would introduce its first smartphone the following week. Bloomberg said that the Beijing-based company's Xiaodu business, which is akin to Amazon's Alexa section, will introduce its first smartphone the following week. This indicates that a second Chinese goliath will soon enter the global smartphone market.

Evidently, Baidu is Google's competition in China. Where Google is prohibited in China, Baidu is the most popular search engine.

Biadu Products

It is not Baidu's first venture into hardware when it enters the smartphone market. Smart displays and speakers are already available from the company. The report says that Baidu is building out a hardware ecosystem to go along with its internet services and is adding a phone to its portfolio.

Baidu enters a market that is already crowded with Chinese players by releasing its first smartphone. It would be the first significant Chinese entry in years into the congested mobile market. There are as many as three Chinese companies among the five largest smartphone brands in the world. In fact, the only two well-known non-Chinese players in the smartphone market are Apple and Samsung.

Baidu enters the smartphone market at a time when the market is going through tough times due to uncertainty in the global economy. Five of the biggest smartphone brands in China are owned by Baidu. The cell phone market in China is the same and has seen a fall. As per Contrast Exploration, China's cell phone deals fell 5% year-on-year in the main quarter of 2023. This is the most minimal Q1 deals figure starting around 2014.

However, this was a sign of bottoming out and an improvement over the double-digit YoY declines seen in previous quarters.

Apple increased sales by 6% year-over-year in a market that was declining in Q1 2023, capturing the largest share of the China smartphone market. Apple's first-quarter market share of 19.9% was its highest since 2014, and its first-quarter sales were also its highest since 2015. Deals of other cell phone brands barring Apple dropped 8% YoY, with significant Android OEMs seeing YoY decreases in the quarter as request stayed frail.

Apple, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, and Xiaomi make up the remaining top four on the list. Here, Oppo incorporates OnePlus, Xiaomi incorporates Redmi, and Vivo incorporates iQOO.