Apple hopes to bring its Apple Intelligence suite of AI features to China in 2025, but the company has reportedly clashed with its partner Baidu over technical and privacy issues.
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Chinese media is reporting that Apple is buying AI services from local tech giant Baidu. The WSJ had earlier reported that the iPhone maker had been in discussions with the company, to use its AI smarts in iOS 18.
Baudi operates a ChatGPT-style LLM known as ERNIE Bot, which claims to “comprehend human intentions and deliver accurate, logical, and fluent responses approaching human level” …
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Apple announced earlier this week at the Worldwide Developers Conference that Baidu will come to the iPhone in the iOS 6 software update, but it just came to light that the Cupertino, Calif.-based Company plans to seize a portion of the China-based search engine’s advertising sales as part of the deal.
According to Bloomberg:
The revenue-sharing agreement with Apple follows similar accords between Baidu and manufacturers of handsets that use Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android operating system, Wang Jing, vice president at Beijing-based Baidu, said in a phone interview today. He declined to disclose the commercial terms.
Apple said this week it will offer Baidu’s search-engine as an option for iPhone and iPad customers, and add Chinese- language support for its Siri voice technology, as the world’s most valuable company tailors its products for Chinese consumers. Baidu, which fields about 80 percent of China’s Web searches, is prepared to incur costs to add smartphone users by offering services such as music streaming for free, Wang said.
Eric Wen, who rates Baidu buy at Mirae Asset Securities, told Bloomberg that Baidu previously shared revenue with websites to encourage traffic for the search engine, while it now has a focus on sharing with smartphone manufacturers. He further estimated that Baidu distributed less than 10 percent of its generated smartphone revenue to those manufacturers.
The deal reflects Baidu’s need to invest in the mobile industry instead of computers, because more people in China are accessing the Internet through smartphones. It is worth noting that Baidu is already baked into 80 percent of Android devices.
Reports are surfacing in China that claim Apple plans to integrate Baidu into iOS next month as the country’s possible default search function.
According to Chinese news website Sina Tech (machine-translation):
Sina Technology News on March 26 morning news, according to informed sources, Apple iOS operating system next month will be formally introduced Baidu search, Baidu and Apple between cooperation component in the China region.
Google’s Susan Creighton revealed last fall that two-thirds of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company’s mobile search comes from Apple iOS devices.
Meanwhile, recent speculation claims Apple is moving to an in-house Mapping solution that would replace Google Maps. The firm also recently removed its publish to YouTube option in QuickTime for Mountain lion. If these latest rumors deem true, Apple’s move to Baidu would further indicate a significant effort to reduce Google’s presence in iOS.
With that said, the move to Baidu might be more than a snub to Google. As SearchEngineLand noted, Baidu holds 80 percent of the search market in China, and it would make sense for the Chinese to carry the same search on their mobile devices as they have on their desktop.
Mountain Lion will cater to Chinese users more than any other OS X version. CEO Tim Cook once more underscored the importance of China by highlighting Mac sales in today’s interview with the Wall Street Journal. Sales doubled in the 1.33 billion-people market during 2011 to the tune of $13 billion in revenue.
“They know about Apple and what Apple stands for. Then they search out and look for the Mac”, he told the paper. Apple’s promotional material said Mountain Lion makes it easy to “set up Mail, Contacts, Calendar, video sharing, web searching, and blogging on your Mac using many popular services in China.”
For starters, Chinese input method in Mountain Lion has “significant enhancements.” Secondly, Apple worked hard to make sure customers in China get a localized experience by providing the ability to select Baidu search in Safari. Baidu is the dominant search engine in China, ranked No. 6 in Alexa’s global rankings and No. 1 in China with an estimated 56.6-percent share of the country’s 4.02 billion search queries as of June 2011…
