Search engine Baidu plans launch of Thai commercial services next year

The Thai-language beta version has been available since the middle of this year. 

Richard Lee, director of international business development, said yesterday that Thailand was an important market for Baidu in Southeast Asia because of its dynamic and fast-growing adoption of technology and the surge in mobile Internet usage. 

Baidu has been in Thailand with a local office for three years, offering nine services except search, including four PC-based services – Baidu Antivirus, Baidu PC Faster, Baidu Spark Browser and Hao 123. 

Four are mobile-based services – Baidu Browser, Du Speed Booster, Du Battery Save and PhotoWonder. The other is Baidu SEM for search-engine marketing.

Baidu’s search engine will be fully available for both personal computers and mobile devices to look up maps, images, videos, voices and news after the formal launch.

“By next year, we will be more active in Thailand. We will have Baidu search-engine service for Thais and we will continue to heavily promote our existing services in Thailand. 

“Next year, the marketing budget for Thailand is set to be rapidly increased by several times compared [with] the usual annual marketing budget,” he said.

Baidu focuses on products and marketing, but it also needs to communicate the benefits of its service through opinion leaders in Thailand, including bloggers.

“We realise that there was some negative feedback in the Thai market for some services that users might feel not comfortable using. It is not our intention to do that. It is because some of our local partners broke the rules to use inappropriate ways of expanding our services. 

“We are dealing with and taking charge of this, and the problems are reduced. We are [one of] the top five technology [firms] in the world, we are not a devil company spreading malware. We welcome feedback about our products. Thailand is an important market where we will keep introducing our innovations,” he said.

The search engine is the company’s core product. Through advertising, it generates most of the company’s revenue. 

In China, Baidu is the largest search engine, but its international business is still small. However, the company aims to penetrate more than half of the countries around the world by 2020. 

“Our international business is at the starting stage. We are trying to attract more users of our products. Our products are free, but we monetise the traffic with our partners in each country we are in. 

“In Southeast Asia, we have been present in only Thailand and Indonesia. Next year we plan to open a local office in India as well as in Mexico,” he said. 

Globally, there are many search engines. About 10 to 20 are active, but there are only four countries that have their own search engine – the United States, Russia, South Korea and China. 

Baidu’s other businesses, including O2O (online-to-offline) and consumer businesses, currently provide only a small portion of its revenue. However, the company plans to bring out three innovative products and services in China next year – “smart chopsticks” (which can detect contaminants in food and transmit a warning to a smartphone), Baidu Eye (similar to Google Glass) and DuBike (a smart bicycle with built-in navigator and activity tracker). 

These kinds of products and services are being considered for customisation and localisation for each country in the future.