Baidu, Qualcomm Announce Collaboration

Baidu BIDU, the world's largest Chinese search engine, today announced a collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI), a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated QCOM, involving the availability and promotion of Baidu cloud service on Android-based devices powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon™ processors. For a limited period of time, Baidu will be offering to end users who elect to use the Baidu cloud service on Android-based devices powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors: (i) 15GB of storage space utilizing the Baidu cloud service, at no charge, for a period of one (1) year following such end user's activation of the Baidu cloud service on his/her device, and (ii) an additional 15GB of storage space utilizing the Baidu cloud service, at no charge, for the lifetime of such device following such end user's activation of the Baidu cloud service on his/her device. In addition to the foregoing promotional offer by Baidu, Baidu is also pleased to announce that it will be optimizing its cloud service to work with Android devices that are based on certain Qualcomm Reference Designs (QRD) offered by QTI. With the optimization of the Baidu cloud service on these devices, manufacturers of such devices will now be offered an integrated end-to-end cloud service solution with differentiated competitive advantages. End users will also enjoy the convenience and added value of the Baidu cloud service on these devices. Specifically, Baidu cloud service will initially be optimized by Baidu to work with Android devices based on QRDs that use either a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM™8x25 processor or a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8x25Q processor, both products of QTI. Baidu cloud service for these devices is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of this year. Jing Wang, vice president of engineering of Baidu, says, “Driven by the brand new cloud strategy, Baidu will offer its strong cloud computing, cloud storage and large-scale data processing platform to cloud developers. This Baidu cloud service offering demonstrates Baidu's ability to launch a service that covers developers across the value chain spanning chipset to software. This is an important step for Baidu to be competitive and integrate across the whole industry chain, and it will help bring end users a wider variety of more integrated and higher quality services.” Xiang Wang, senior vice president and president of Qualcomm Greater China, says, “We are pleased to cooperate with Baidu on cloud services, and we feel that QTI and Baidu offer complementary products and services. I believe that these efforts provide an opportunity to positively impact the mobile Internet industry. ” Baidu Cloud is structured on Personal Cloud Storage and is offered to smartphone manufacturers and chipset providers as a complete solution including functions such as cloud data management and multiple devices synchronization. In terms of security, the Baidu cloud features https encrypted transmissions, storage of files by block, encrypted storage of bottom layer meta information, Oauth 2.0 authentication, multiple duplicated file storage, and a security monitoring system which provides a high measure of security of all content. In terms of service stability, Baidu's cloud service now has reached the SLA level 1 range after years of experience and an accumulation of industry leading technology, and now has a target availability rate of up to 99.99 percent. QRD offers strong flexibility, stability and scalability. It supports and helps satisfy the extensive needs of device users based on multiple 3G modes. To date, the QRD program has launched 100 products and has collaborated with more than 40 OEMs with 100 new QRD-based devices in the pipeline.