Amazon China and Baidu join hands

The two Internet giants in China, Baidu and Amazon have reached in an agreement to strengthen their respective positions in the strong Chinese market.. The two companies, digital heavyweights, formalized the agreement Thursday, December 3, 2015 in a press release.

As an element of partnership Baidu search engines will be installed by default on Kindle ebook reader produced by Amazon, as well as the Fire tablets that are sold in China. In return, Amazon will be included into the mobile application store of Baidu. Amazon will also be incorporated in Baidu’s online video platform iQIYI. This announcement was made following the release of Youku Tudou by Alibaba, another heavyweight of the Chinese web.

Baidu is growing in the music industry online with Baidu Music by merging its activities in this sector with Taihe Entertainment Group, covering China as well as Taiwan and Hong Kong. The company has a catalog of 10,000- 700,000 compositions and recordings. Baidu Music is attempting to enter into a direct competition with QQ Music (Tencent) and especially Apple, which offers Apple Music. The latter was launched in China in September 2015. Baidu has also signed a partnership with Ctrip and Qunar in October.