In Till now the Chinese hardware market has been dominated by the likes of Apple and Lenovo. Now with Dell joining hands with Chinas top search engine, Baidu Yi, the coming years could see lot of new churning happening in the countrys hardware market. Dell and Baidu plan to jointly develop tablet computers and mobile phones to be marketed to Chinese customers. Dell has declined to give a timeline for the launch of the devices, but according to local sources, it may be as early as November.
In terms of potential customers, China is a goldmine. The country has more than 900 million mobile users, and it is on its way to becoming the worlds fastest growing tablet market. Baidu already enjoys the reputation of being the Google of this part of the world, so it should have no problem in marketing hardware under its brand name.
Only last week Baidu had launched a new mobile application platform and offered a glimpse of its upcoming mobile operating system, which the company hopes will serve a growing number of users accessing the Internet from smartphones and tablet computers. Since Googles high profile exit from China due to concerns related to hacking and censorship, Baidu has built a formidable dominance of the countrys search market. According to reports, Dell's sales in China have grown 22 percent in the first quarter while its retail presence in the country exceeds 10,000 sales points.
Baidu hasnt said anything publicly about the new agreement with Dell, but did note that it had existing deals with other device manufacturers. Dell, however, is the first to commit to building hardware that utilizes Biadu Yi.
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