Apple might be to plan to make Baidu the default search engine for its iOS devices in China, a move which would further increase the Chinese mobile search market share of Baidu.
Actually, Google is currently the default search engine on Apple’s device in the whole world, but it doesn’t really make sense in China, because Baidu dominates the biggest online search market, with more than 80% market share and it competes primarily with Google in search and other Chinese Internet giants like Tencent, Sina, NetEase and Sohu.
Google’s attempts to operate in China have been hobbled by rows over censorship with the Chinese government, when it still leads the global search space. Goolge is virtually unusable in China after it exited the country, shut down Google.cn, and started redirecting its users to Google.com.hk, through which it offers uncensored search results.
Baidu could see lots of search traffic from iOS devices in China, which will help increase its market share and boost its search advertising revenue and accounts for over 60% of its value. Although it’s not clear whether Apple will add Baidu as a search option or make it the default search option, the latter seems increasingly likely.
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