China’s largest search Baidu Inc. on May 15, 2012 said that it will soon be launching a cheap smartphone with Foxconn Technology Group, China Unicom and Sichuan Changhong Electric Co. The new smartphone will mark the entry of the company in to the smartphone segment.
The upcoming smartphone will be Changhong branded and will be made by Foxconn. It will be using Baidu’s mobile Cloud operating system and will be priced less than 1,000 yuan.
Not many details have been revealed and no launch date has been mentioned in the statement released by the search engine giant. But the statement assured that the smartphone is expected to be launched in very near future.
On May 11, 2012 Baidu said that Baidu Cloud will replace its Baidu Yi mobile operating system which was launched last year. At present ZTE Corp and Huawei Technologies are the dominants in terms of low-end smartphones in China. Wang Jing, the vice president of engineering and head of mobile at Baidu said, “We have a few partnerships coming up and will announce it in a week”. Wang added that the firm is in talks with the global handset manufacturers to make the smartphones with Baidu’s OS.
