Q: What other services is Baidu planning to offer in Japan?
Li: Baidu strategically "offers services and functions optimized for each market." Accordingly, staff members at our Japanese branch will decide what Baidu will offer in Japan after studying the local market's characteristics and user tastes. They will pass their decisions to our development team in Beijing, which will then actually develop relevant services and functions.
Q: Although you only announced four Japanese version services (Web, photo, video and blog searches) this time, the Chinese media have said that Baidu is planning more Japanese version services.
Li: I've also read the report in China, but that's just the Chinese media guessing. We used graphics of airplanes and cooked meals in our teaser advertisements before starting the full-scale service in Japan. Seeing them, the Chinese media probably guessed that we would offer search services concerning travel and gourmet restaurants.
In fact, we are currently researching and developing several services in house, and that's making progress. However, we could offer four kinds of services only in about one year since we started our beta version services in Japan. I don't think that this is slow at all for a business to be developed.
We would like to decide what services we will offer in the future in light of market researches done by staff members at our Japanese branch.
Q: Some are saying Baidu will operate services for mobile phones and Internet shopping.
Li: Mobile phone network services in Japan are much more developed than those in China. Partly because of the significant competition among carriers, the services boast high speeds and low fees. Hence, mobile network search can be counted in services, which we must operate someday in Japan.
There are also similar services in China, but they are only used by a small number of users under the current circumstances, where fees are high and data rates are low.
Q: Are you in talks with any particular mobile phone carrier in Japan?
Li: I can't comment at this stage.
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