Shopping drives Baidu growth

Chinese search engine Baidu is experiencing rapid growth as more and more Chinese shop online.

Releasing its September quarter sales results, the US Nasdaq-listed business says Online to Offline is driving a massive growth in mobile users, gross merchandise value and mobile map usage.

“With mobile accounting for nearly two-thirds of Baidu’s search traffic and China squarely in a mobile age, Baidu is pioneering and redefining the mobile experience for users in China,” said Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu.

“We further extended the reach of our platform by deeply integrating and connecting search and maps with transaction services,” he said.

Jennifer Li, Baidu’s CFO, said the momentum in transaction services gives the company confidence to continue investing.

Mobile search monthly active users (MAUs) were 643 million for the month of September 2015, an increase of 26 per cent year on year. Mobile maps MAUs were 326 million for the month of September 2015, an increase of 34 per cent.

And Gross merchandise value (GMV) for transaction services totalled RMB60.2 billion (US$9.5 billion) for the third quarter of 2015, an increase of 119 per cent year on year.

The company’s payment service, Baidu Wallet reported a 520 per cent increase in activated accounts to reach 45 million at the end of September.

Total revenues in the third quarter of 2015 were RMB 18.383 billion (US$2.892 billion), a 36 per cent increase from the corresponding period in 2014. Mobile revenue represented 54 per cent of total revenues for the third quarter of 2015, compared to 37 per cent for the corresponding period in 2014.

Operating profit in the third quarter of 2015 was RMB2.512 billion ($395.2 million), a 35.9 per cent decrease from the corresponding period in 2014.