Baidu strikes at Google with HP deal in China

HP PCs will be sold with a special shortcut key preset to load Baidu.com

HP desktop PCs sold in China will be bundled with links to Baidu.com, the country's leading internet search engine, Baidu announced today.

The news comes two months after executives at Baidu's main rival in the country, Google China, revealed a similar bundling deal with Dell.

HP Pavilion and Presario PCs will be sold with a special shortcut key preset to load Baidu.com, and Baidu set as the default home page and address bar search engine for Internet Explorer.

The changes will be introduced in October, for an initial period of one year.

HP held about 4.2 per cent of China's desktop PC market in the first quarter of this year, compared to 8.3 per cent for Dell. The two companies held larger shares of the notebook market, at 11 and 14 per cent respectively.

"We try to ensure a ubiquitous search service, and help users to get the information they need easily. We are glad to collaborate with leading companies such as HP to provide users with the products and services they need," said Baidu chief technology officer Jerry Liu.

The deal is the second search win for Baidu this year in its ongoing battle with Google, Yahoo and local rivals for the Chinese search market.

Mobile phone vendor Nokia has added a Baidu search application to several of its high-end phones sold in China. This enables users to easily use Baidu's web search, news search, image search and online community, according to Nokia.

Financial details of these deals have not been revealed, although Chinese media sources say that if money changed hands it is likely to have come from Baidu and not from its hardware vendor partners.

Baidu's share of the Chinese search engine market was put at 43.9 per cent in the first quarter by local research firm Analysys International, compared to 13.2 per cent for Google China and 21.1 per cent for Yahoo China.

The HP bundling deal will help Baidu put its search engine in front of more highly educated and higher income users in China, the market sector in which Google has traditionally been strongest.

"The trend of individualisation is spreading quickly through the entire IT industry. HP is trying to achieve the ideal integration of innovative technologies and individualisation to bring true individualised experiences to their users," explained Wee Kee Yeo, director of HP China's consumer PC division.