Mobile voice search in Chinese unveiled by Google
On November 3rd, 2009, the biggest universal search engine Google Inc launched a Chinese language voice search service, which expected to attract users from domestic rival Baidu Inc in the world’s largest mobile market.
The new service is aimed to help Chinese users use Google’s existing search services like Web search and Google Maps via cell phones.
Till now the Chinese version voice search provided by Google can only be used for Nokia’s S60 series, which includes 46 models of handsets. But Vic Gundotra, Google’s engineering vice-president, claimed that the service will expanded to other platforms soon after, which include Apple Inc’s iPhone and Android-based handsets.
Lin Bin, deputy director of Google China Research Center said in a statement that mobile Internet era is coming; mobile phones will soon become as powerful as personal computers. However, since the kinds of mobile phones are limited, the searching on a mobile is extremely hard.
In 2008, English voice search service is provided by Google, which contains images and maps, for the handsets of Android, Nokia S60, Black-Berry and iPhone.
Google aimed to make its mobile search business surpass the PC-based Internet search business, said Lin.
During the past few years, Google made efforts to catch up with Chinese domestic leader Baidu Inc which flung the former as a second player in China’s online search engine market. Since 2009, Google has been popularizing its mobile search service vigorously in China, where the users of mobile phone are already passed 700 million.
According to figures from domestic research firm Analysis International, Baidu is still the market leader in China, which takes over 60 percent of the search market share. However, in China’s mobile search market, Google is a little bit in front of Baidu whose share reached 26 percent in the second quarter in 2009 while the former clinched 26.6 percent.
Chinese search engine Baidu claimed in October that it cooperated with China Unicom to provide wireless search for the carrier’s 3G mobile subscribers. On Friday, the popular iPhone was launched by China Unicom in China.
Experts predicted with the mobile phone users can surf the Internet via handsets, the mobile search is becoming one of the most attractive markets for search engines to expand their service beyond personal computers.
Due to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), by the end of June, the number of China’s Internet users achieved to 338 million, while the mobile Internet users increased 32.1 percent to 155 million.
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