Tough domestic competition prompts drive for international users
China's search engine giant Baidu Inc plans to push its mapping boundaries into more than 150 countries and regions by the end of 2016, as its map division faces fierce competition domestically.
Currently, the Baidu navigation services cover 18 countries and regions in the Asia-Pacific region. By 2020, half of its users are expected to come from overseas markets, according to a statement Baidu sent to the Global Times Tuesday.
The map unit's overseas expansion marks a milestone for Baidu's globalization strategy, and it will build a solid foundation for Baidu's goal to connect people around the world with its services, President Zhang Yaqin told a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
As of 2015, Baidu's products and services including navigation, search engine and cloud storage had more than 1 billion overseas users from 200 countries and regions, the statement showed.
"The slowly growing domestic mapping industry and fierce competition in the sector also prompted Baidu's map division to seek overseas expansion," Zhang Yi, CEO of Guangzhou-based market research firm iiMedia Research, told the Global Times Tuesday.
The penetration rate of China's mobile mapping services reached 88.7 percent in 2015, according to a report issued by iiMedia in late February. China was estimated to have 652 million mobile mapping services users in 2016, up 7.9 percent year-on-year.
The report said that the trend of single-digit year-on-year growth is expected to continue with iiMedia's forecast showing users growing to 733 million in 2018.
Meanwhile, Baidu's map division was caught in a spat with AutoNavi Holdings, a Beijing-based navigation company.
Auto-Navi on Monday claimed on its official Weibo account that Baidu put drivers' safety at risk by encouraging them to test its mapping services and record the results while driving. Baidu's map division responded that it placed great importance on testers' safety.
AutoNavi, which provides navigation data to Apple in China, runs the nation's No.1 mobile mapping app, which had a 32.6 percent market share in 2015, followed by Baidu's mapping services with 29.3 percent, according to iiMedia's report.
Baidu will also confront red-hot competition in markets beyond China, said analysts.
Baidu may find it tough to establish itself in the overseas mapping market, especially in the US and EU, where US giant Google maintains leadership, said Zhang Xu, an industry analyst with Beijing-based market consultancy Analysys International.
"In comparison with Google, Baidu is weak in navigation data updating and POI (a specific point location that a person may find useful or interesting) collecting," he told the Global Times Tuesday.
Still, analysts think increasing Chinese outbound travelers may create a niche market for Baidu's mapping services.
In addition to navigation data similar to what Google provides, Baidu's mapping division said it will provide online-to-offline information such as coupons offered by local merchants.
"This is something Google lacks and something Chinese tourists need," Analysys' Zhang said.
Data from the China National Tourism Administration showed that China's outbound travel in 2015 stood at 120 million visits, up 12 percent.
