Baidu and Symbian Foundation Co-Establish Joint Laboratory to Enable Wireless "Box Computing" on Symbian Platform Tweet

Beijing, London and San Francisco - Baidu, the world’s largest Chinese search engine provider, and the Symbian Foundation, the non-profit organization responsible for the world’s leading open source smartphone platform, announced a strategic initiative where the two parties will co-establish a joint laboratory to stimulate the development and launch of wireless “box computing” that will be tightly integrated with the Symbian platform. Combining Symbian’s wireless expertise in smartphone platforms and Baidu’s R&D strength in search engines, the two will drive the joint development, integration and launch of wireless “box computing” within the Symbian platform architecture. This will enable application and web developers to incorporate robust search functionality into their applications and leverage this "platform within a platform" to expand the Symbian/Baidu ecosystem, bringing new applications and user experiences to Symbian devices and extending the reach of Baidu in the mobile marketplace.

According to this strategic agreement, the Symbian Foundation will open the necessary platform technology interfaces for Baidu to enable wireless "box computing" deep within the Symbian middleware layer, facilitating the full integration of Baidu’s wireless "box computing" into the Symbian platform. Both sides intend to encourage third-party developers to incorporate "box computing" in applications and web services that support Symbian and the companies will jointly provide a complete "box computing" platform solution to handset manufacturers and operators. To promote "box computing" innovation on Symbian, the results of the Box Computing Joint Laboratory will be shared with the entire mobile industry and be made available through the Symbian Foundation’s open source efforts.

According to a report by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)1, by the end of 2009 the number of mobile internet users in China reached 233,000,000, which is approximately 60.8% of all internet users in the country. The availability of Baidu’s convenient and advanced "box computing" technology platform within the powerful Symbian platform will give mobile internet users improved access to information on the internet and also allows them to search information stored on the device, including pictures, music and SMS. The "box computing" platform has the potential to bring an unprecedented search experience to hundreds of millions of users.

According to Gartner2, the Symbian platform has approximately 44% share of the global smartphone market, selling 24 million devices in Q1 2010 and it is projected that within three or four years there will be 1 billion devices using Symbian. Baidu has more than a decade of search technology experience and expertise and its search engine maintains a coverage rate of more than 95% in China. Moreover, as more people use mobile devices to access the internet, the "box computing" initiative will develop advanced technology to enable the next-generation global internet for mobile users, meaning this strategic cooperation of the two parties is very important for the wireless internet industry. Baidu’s "box computing" vision will positively affect the mobile internet landscape and the Symbian platform will lead the market in internet integration capability ahead of competitors.

“The strategic cooperation with the Symbian Foundation is a part of Baidu’s “Box Computing” strategy and an important step for launching the wireless “box computing” platform. Baidu will cooperate with its partners in the wireless industry with a more open attitude and bring more valuable services to its partners and users with leading technology innovations,” noted Wang Zhan, the vice president of Baidu.

"Baidu has played a leading role in internet services, especially in China, and we look forward to having them share their expertise with the growing Symbian community," said Lee M. Williams, Executive Director of Symbian. "Additionally, we expect the integration of "box computing" services into the Symbian platform to stimulate third-party developers worldwide to create a large body of innovative applications, leveraging Baidu’s market-leading search and inquiry platform."

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