Move unlikely to reverse declining fortunes of Amazon's gadgets
Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc teamed up with U.S.-based e-commerce leader Amazon.com Inc on Thursday to become the default search engine on Amazon's Kindle and Fire hardware platforms in China, effective immediately.
Experts said the move could help Amazon to enhance its user experience, but it isn't likely to boost the sales of its eReader and tablets.
Baidu will also cooperate with Amazon on search service, distribution and video content, the company said in a statement e-mailed to the Global Times on Thursday.
"We will include Baidu's search service, the Baidu app shop and the iQiyi video streaming service onto our new Fire tablets and Kindle eReader, and we hope these localized services will conjure up Chinese users' passion for reading," Zhang Wenyi, global vice president at Amazon, was quoted as saying in the Baidu statement.
Amazon launched a new Fire tablet on the same day priced at 499 yuan ($77.99).
Fan Kai, an Internet analyst with Beijing-based CCID Consulting, said the two devices are Amazon's most important mobile terminals, and their default search engine has been a hotly contested spot for search service providers.
In September 2012, Amazon announced that the Bing search service offered by Microsoft Corp would replace Google as the default search engine.
"Millions of Fire tablets were used to help Bing to expand its market share and Baidu will enjoy the same benefit," Fan told the Global Times Thursday.
Amazon's status as an important e-commerce platform is also valued by Baidu, Fan said.
Amazon has been working to improve customers' experience. In November, it opened its first bricks-and-mortar store in Seattle in the US.
But some analysts expressed skepticism.
"The cooperation will have a limited effect, as tablets are being effectively replaced by new smartphone offerings," said Zhang Yi, CEO of Guangzhou-based iiMedia Research, an independent consultancy that focuses on mobile Internet.
Worldwide tablet shipments are expected to reach 211.3 million units in 2015, down 8.1 percent from 2014, according to a report released by International Data Corp (IDC) on Tuesday.
The IDC estimate followed three consecutive quarters of declining worldwide tablet shipments in 2015 as the industry witnessed a transition from slates to detachable tablets.
In IDC's tracking of tablet shipments in the fourth quarter of 2014, the last period when Amazon made the top five vendor list, tablets produced by Amazon held a mere 2.3 percent of the global market, in contrast to Apple's 28.1 percent.
A 20-something Beijing resident, who only gave her surname as Zhang, is a Kindle eReader user.
"I will need to use Baidu to search for book downloads, so a default Baidu search engine will make it easier for me," Zhang told the Global Times Thursday.
"However, typing and surfing on an ink screen isn't a great experience anyway and I try to avoid it when I have access to a PC, so I think this new arrangement is of limited use," Zhang said.
