BEIJING: China’s biggest search engine provider Baidu added 38.3 percent in revenue in the second quarter from a year ago but profit growth eased due to heavy spending on mobile services.
Revenue in the second quarter was 16.6 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion), and mobile-related income made 50 percent of that.
Baidu is working to link more offline services to its search and online map business and to diversify its service offerings to drive growth and catch up with rivals Alibaba and Tencent.
Profit was up 3.3 percent to 3.66 billion yuan, and operating costs and expenses climbed 56 percent year on year because of higher spending on promotions.
Gross merchandise volume, such as group buying and movie ticket-related transaction size, more than doubled from a year ago to 40.6 billion yuan.
Baidu is striving to appeal to advertisers to get them to promote their brands and services through Baidu’s mobile applications, Chief Executive Officer Robin Li said during a conference call yesterday.
Online advertising sales added 37 percent, and total number of active online advertisers rose 21 percent to 590,000.
