Baidu Core

Mobile Ecosystem

Products and Services for Users

Baidu App. Our flagship app enables users to access our search, feed, content and other services through mobile devices. Baidu App offers twin-engine search and feed functions that leverage our AI-powered algorithms and deep user insight to offer users a compelling experience. Through the building blocks of BJH accounts, Smart Mini Program and Managed Page, Baidu App provides users single log-on, native-app-like experience to a wide range of information and services dispersed across isolated mobile apps and HTML5 websites, as well as merchants a full suite of marketing cloud services. Baidu App’s spanning mobile ecosystem has resulted in more users logging in. In December 2020, MAUs and DAUs of Baidu App reached 544 million and 202 million, respectively.

Haokan. Haokan offers a wide variety of user generated and professionally produced short videos, usually several minutes long, in coordination with MCNs. Haokan allows users to upload, view, search, rate, share, favorite, comment, and follow. Video creators and curators can distribute their content to build a fan base and receive revenue share for their content contribution.

Quanmin. Quanmin is a flash video app for users to create and share short videos, usually less than one minute long, and live videos with entertainment orientation, such as musical, dance, comedy, acting, and lip-sync. Users can shoot or upload flash videos and edit them with built-in special effects, filters and stickers. Contents are distributed in personalized timeline powered by Baidu AI recommendation algorithms.

Internally Developed Knowledge-and-Information-Centric Products

Baidu Wiki. A leading wiki in China compiled by experts in specialized fields featuring high-quality columns and videos, such as Encyclopedia of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Digital Museum and Recorder of History.

Baidu Knows. An online community where users can pose questions to other users, such as individuals, professionals, and enterprises. Baidu Knows leverages Baidu’s search capabilities to help users find answers to their questions on the Internet fast and efficiently, while at the same time allow various partners of Baidu Knows to engage with their targeted users.

Baidu Experience. An online platform where users share daily knowledge and experience, providing practical tips and interesting perspectives in areas, such as software, lifestyle, and games, etc.

Baidu Post. A social media built on topical online communities. Users can post text, image, audio and video content and reply to original curation, forming valuable discussion groups. Baidu Post draws new users through close integration with search and user generated content, and has been a popular platform for celebrity fans, online game players, and online novel readers to share topical discussions, especially about current trends.

Products and Services for Users

AI Building Blocks

Baijiahao (BJH Accounts). Our publisher network aggregates articles, photos, short videos, live videos, and augmented reality clips from MCNs, media outlets, and other professional sources, for distribution through search, feed, and short video products. BJH publisher accounts reached 3.8 million in December 2020, representing a growth of 48% over the same period in 2019.
Smart Mini Program. App developers may share their content and services in Baidu App with native-app like experience through increasingly popular applets, known as Smart Mini Program. Users can now search for and access content and services that historically were only available in standalone apps within Baidu App, without having to download and maintain so many apps on their phones. Launched in July 2018, Smart Mini Program has seen large user growth, with MAUs of Smart Mini Program reaching 414 million in December 2020.
Managed Page. Managed Page is a hosted mobile alternative for website owners. Site owners may open an account on our platform, use our tools and services powered by AI and engage with users without having to maintain their own site and pay for server, software and bandwidth costs. Managed Page comes with industry-specific templates and is designed to provide users with more reliable and secure information.

Baidu Union. We match the promotional links of our online marketing services customers to the online properties of Baidu Union partners, which consists of a large number of partners, such as third party websites, wap sites and mobile apps. Some Baidu Union partners, such as online portal websites and Internet cafes, also embed our products and services, such as Baidu Search or a search function powered by Baidu Search, onto their online properties, which allows Baidu Union partners to provide high-quality, relevant search results to their users without incurring the cost of development and maintenance for advanced search capabilities and monetize their traffic through revenue sharing arrangements with us. Baidu Union partners may use our content recommendation system to provide feed content and ads to their users.

Products and Services for Customers

P4P. Our auction-based P4P services allow customers to bid for priority placement of paid sponsored links and reach users who search for information related to their products or services. We charge our customers on a cost-per-click basis. Customers may choose to purchase search, feed and other online marketing services and have the option to set daily allowances targeting users by geography in China and specify the time period for their campaign. As our partners adopt Smart Mini Programs and Managed Page, some of them have begun to use these properties as their landing page, in lieu of their own mobile apps and websites.

Search marketing services are mainly provided to customers through our proprietary online marketing system which drives monetization efficiency by improving relevance in paid search and optimizing value for our customers.

Feed marketing services usually comprise image-based or video-based advertising, appearing between the feed headlines or within the feed content. It is powered by Baidu AI in order to better match goods and services providers with their targeted audience while optimizing user experience.
Others. Our other marketing services comprise display-based marketing services and other online marketing services based on performance criteria other than cost-per-click. Customers can choose different mix of our service offerings to optimize their return on investment. BrandZone allows customers to display integrated text, logo, image, and video in a structured and uniform manner on a prominent position of the search result page or in vertical search products, such as Baidu Knows. Programmatic marketing platform supports the placement of advertisement using standard, intelligent, or customized creativity, different purchasing methods (guaranteed delivery or real time bidding), and multiple payment methods.
Marketing cloud platform. Our marketing cloud platform integrates one-stop-shop media purchase with CRM functionalities, to allow our customers to purchase brand and performance-based marketing services, build audience and user engagement, generate leads and maintain relationships with users, leveraging tools and services powered by Baidu AI. Our marketing cloud platform helps us better understand our customers’ needs and enable our customers to leverage Baidu’s AI to simplify their marketing process and improve the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

Baidu Core—AI Cloud

AI Solutions. Developers and enterprises can easily access and build customizable AI solutions for various industries by leveraging our full suite of cloud-based modularized solutions, including algorithms, pre-training models and data sets in areas of speech recognition, computer vision, NLP, OCR, video analysis, and structured data analysis. Our powerful and cost effective cloud-based modularized AI solutions allow developers and enterprises to improve their own products and services and expand their use cases over time. While the services on this platform is free for developers, its wide adoption and application by our large developer community allow us to further improve our AI capabilities over time to maintain our technological advantage. Furthermore, as we have access to where the developer community and its customers are directing their efforts, we use those insights to enhance our AI solutions and direct our investments in AI capabilities targeting industries have the most commercialization opportunities.

Knowledge-Graph Cloud Solutions. We offer our large-scale knowledge graph to establish and pre-train various decision models for our customers. Using our customers’ big data, we can establish systematic knowledge graph and develop various computing models that can provide instantaneous answers to complicated decision making for our customers. Leveraging the knowledge graph that we have built from handling vast amounts of content online for the last two decades, we can provide differentiated knowledge-graph cloud solutions built on our AI PaaS for specific applications and develop various computing models that can be agilely adopted and applied to the needs of different customers across multiple industries. For example, a utility company used our knowledge-graph cloud solution to determine the amount of electricity needed to support a geographic region that was deploying EV charging stations; a retail bank used our knowledge-graph cloud solution to improve credit risk management for consumer and SME lending; and a large enterprise used our knowledgegraph cloud solution to recommend relevant documents to its employees to support the daily and weekly write up of management reports.

Industry Vertical Solutions. Leveraging our PaaS and SaaS solutions and knowledge graph, we have developed customized AI cloud solutions for our customers in specific industries, such as smart transportation, finance, manufacturing, utilities, telecom and media. Our experience in serving industry leaders in these verticals further allows us to quickly scale to provide customizable solution to serve other enterprises in the same space, supporting our deeper penetration in these verticals. For example, in the transportation industry, we are a pioneer and industry leader in developing V2X solutions, the infrastructure backbone to smart transportation, to cities in China to help them improve municipal traffic condition, air pollution and road safety, using Baidu AI technology. In August 2020, we won a RMB460 million project to help the city of Guangzhou to improve its traffic efficiency and safety by adopting our V2X solution. The Guangzhou project uses Apollo ACE transportation engine, which, in essence, is a transportation cloud solution that processes traffic information from Apollo MaaS and V2X, DuerOS connected vehicles and Baidu Maps, providing traffic agencies better information to improve traffic management and transportation services and offer autonomous driving services. The Guangzhou project demonstrates our technological capabilities and the advantages of our full-stack solutions, which could help us attract more contracts from other cities. As of December 31, 2020, we have won projects in over one dozen cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The industry know-how from our existing businesses, such as our Mobile Ecosystem and iQIYI, also provides valuable insights on how to tailor AI Cloud solutions to customers in the technology and media industries.

Others. We offer Baidu Drive, which allows users to store and retrieve photos, videos, and other files on AI Cloud, along with other capabilities, such as group share and data transfer.

Baidu Core—Intelligent Driving & OGI

Intelligent Driving
We are the market leader in autonomous driving in China in terms of number of test miles and number of test licenses. As of December 31, 2020, we had 199 autonomous driving licenses with extensive geographical coverage in China, compared to the second player which had approximately 20 licenses. A well-known research firm, names Apollo as one of the four global leaders in autonomous driving, recognizing us as the top-tier autonomous driving company from China. Apollo is an open platform, which we believe maximizes the reach and value of our technology. As of December 31, 2020, our Apollo ecosystem has more than 200 partners, tier one suppliers and other strategic partners cumulatively.

With its focus on intelligence, Apollo provides a comprehensive, safe, secure and reliable solution that supports all major features and functions of an autonomous vehicle, helping build intelligent vehicles and smart roads through intelligent transformation. We have an extensive portfolio of autonomous driving technology infrastructures. Our experience in implementing and operating V2X solutions, accumulated test miles, and our deep learning capability helps us train models from real world and simulated data to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of our solutions.

Our ecosystem, industry know-how, road and traffic understanding, technology, experience with autonomous driving operations and cost advantage give us strong competitive advantages in driving the development of the intelligent driving industry, which includes Apollo Self Driving (HD Maps, AVP and ANP), intelligent EVs and robotaxi (autonomous driving fleet operation).

Apollo Self Driving. We have been investing in L3 and L4 self-driving technology to provide automakers with self-driving services. Under Apollo Self Driving, HD Maps supports L3 and L4 selfdriving. In addition, we introduced AVP (our automated valet parking) services in 2018, which allow a driver to get out of the car upon arrival at his or her destination and our L4 solution would enable the vehicle to autopark, and to direct the vehicle to automatically drive to driver’s location out of the parking lot. In December 2020, we introduced ANP (our autonomous navigation pilot) services, which leverage our autonomous driving capabilities. We have signed strategic agreements with 10 leading automakers to power their passenger vehicles with HD maps and/or AVP, and we recently started accepting orders for our ANP services. These products are in the early stage of monetization and their revenue contribution is insignificant.

Intelligent EVs. We recently formed a new EV company and have entered into a strategic partnership with multinational auto manufacturer Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (Geely). We will provide intelligent driving capabilities to power the passenger vehicles, and Geely, which holds the distinction of best-selling Chinese automobile brand in past years under the Volvo and Geely brands, will contribute its expertise in automobile design and manufacturing.

Apollo Robotaxi. Robotaxi operation represents a massive opportunity. We received T4 licenses, the highest level of autonomous driving test license issued by the working group led by Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport, which permits autonomous vehicles to operate in complex driving conditions, including urban roads, tunnels, school zones and other scenarios. In September 2019, Apollo’s first robotaxi pilot program was made available to the public in Changsha, Hunan. Since then, Apollo’s robotaxi service has been made available in Beijing, Changsha and Cangzhou and has expanded into larger networks and more complex road conditions, such as downtown streets. In October 2020, Baidu fully opened the Apollo Robotaxi service to public in Beijing. Robotaxi is in the early stage of monetization and its revenue contribution is insignificant.

OGI

Baidu Health
Baidu Health’s goal is to provide doctors and hospitals more efficient online presence, through social accounts, live streaming seminars, discussion forums and telemedicine, as well as providing them with hosted management tools to remain in contact with their patients efficiently, such as messaging, appointment re-scheduling and monitoring of treatment plans. Conversely, Baidu Health help users find the doctor and hospital that best suits their different healthcare needs. Through our AI building blocks, we promote an information to social to purchase workflow, while connecting users to doctors and hospitals to improve their wellness over a lifetime. Peak-day healthcare related search queries reached 190 million in 2020.

Baidu Health consists of in-depth, authoritative healthcare content, including that from approximately 300,000 doctors and medical experts, by aggregating a wide range of third-party healthcare and wellness information from our AI building blocks, as well as from self-produced products, such as Baidu Healthcare Wiki.

Through BJH accounts, Smart Mini Programs, live streaming, and messaging tools, we enable users to engage with doctors and more than 100 hospitals nationwide and make an informed decision on selecting the doctor or hospital organization that most fits their needs, and continue to gain access to their primary doctor and affiliated hospital.

DuerOS Smart Assistant.

DuerOS is a leading smart assistant for the Chinese language, which powers first-party Xiaodu home smart devices and smart earphones, as well as third-party smart phones, children smart watches and story machines. DuerOS is differentiated by its multi-round conversation AI capabilities, leveraging internally designed Baidu Honghu AI chip, as well as by DuerOS skills store, which offers over 4,400 skills in wide ranging genres, including education, video, online game and live streaming. The wide selection of skills offered on DuerOS has allowed Xiaodu Smart Display to achieve an average daily activated time span per device of over 3 hour in 2020. In 2019, Xiaodu Smart Display ranked No. 1 in smart display shipments globally, and Xiaodu smart speakers ranked No. 1 in smart speaker shipments in China, according to the CIC Report. We generate revenue from the sale of our smart assistant devices to our customers directly and through our distribution network.

Baidu Maps. A voice-enabled mobile app providing users with travel-related services, including POI search, route planning, precise navigation, taxi-hailing service and real-time traffic condition information. Baidu Maps has a MAU of 316 million in December 2020. Baidu Maps also provides professional and stable map services to business partners across different sectors.