Lanjinger TMT, 7 November — Baidu announced its unaudited financial results for the third quarter of 2019. Revenue in the period was RMB 28.1 billion, with net income attributable to Baidu of RMB 4.4 billion (non-GAAP).
“Baidu App maintained strong growth momentum, with daily active users reaching 189 million in September, up 25% year on year, and in-app search continued to gain share. As our strategic focus, combining search with feeds has enriched the content and services in Baidu App and improved the user experience; attracting more creators and institutions to provide content and services on Baidu’s platform has also brought us more users, which further drove Baidu Core’s operating margin up 14 percentage points sequentially,” said Robin Li, co-founder, chairman and CEO. “In AI, Xiaodu Assistant grew rapidly, with more than 4.2 billion interactions in September, over 4.5 times the same period last year; in September Baidu’s first fleet of 45 Apollo robotaxis began trial operation in Changsha, Hunan, and we are excited by the early commercialisation results in intelligent transport.”
“Baidu maintained solid growth in the third quarter, with revenue reaching RMB 28.1 billion. After 9% sequential growth in the second quarter, revenue grew a further 7% sequentially this quarter,” said Herman Yu, Baidu’s chief financial officer.
Through sustained investment and planning, Baidu has built China’s leading mobile ecosystem centred on knowledge and information. In the third-quarter results, Baijiahao content creators reached 2.4 million in September, up 57% year on year, and their quality content can be shared into the feeds and found through search at the same time. Baidu smart mini programs reached 290 million monthly active users, up 157% year on year.
Xiaodu Assistant kept up its rapid momentum. Surveys by Canalys, Strategy Analytics and IDC show Xiaodu smart speakers ranked first in shipments in the Chinese market in the second quarter; IDC data puts the Xiaodu Zaijia series first in the global smart-display speaker market. Skills in the Xiaodu skill store have reached 3,200, including ABC Reading (education), Kuaishou (short video), Mango TV (online video), Douyu (game streaming) and Meimei Xiaoxiaole (casual games). Xiaodu developers number 36,000.
Apollo made a breakthrough in the early commercialisation of intelligent transport. In September the country’s first fleet of 45 robotaxis began trial operation in Changsha, and Baidu’s vehicle-road collaboration system was deployed there to help vehicles respond flexibly to traffic conditions, overcome traditional blind spots and improve traffic efficiency and safety. Recently Baidu obtained 15 road-test licences for autonomous driving in Wuhan and 30 passenger-carrying test licences in Cangzhou, Hebei, bringing its total to 150 — more than half of all autonomous driving test licences granted in China.
In August Baidu held its Yunzhi summit, launching new enterprise AI solutions that use vision, speech processing and other AI technologies to make cloud services more efficient and easier to operate. Baidu AI Cloud showcased a range of enterprise solutions, including accelerating quality inspection on high-tech component production lines, automatic video processing and tagging, and work with a local bank to improve customer service through a “digital” employee in its app.
The Baidu AI open platform ecosystem continues to grow in influence, with more than 1.5 million developers. On the platform, developers can use Baidu’s AI technologies across the board, including speech recognition, computer vision, natural language processing and the open-source PaddlePaddle deep-learning framework.
In addition, by September the cumulative user base of Baidu Maps’ intelligent voice assistant exceeded 280 million, more than double the same period last year.
As an important video content partner in Baidu’s search and feeds ecosystem, iQIYI kept strong user growth. By September, iQIYI had 105.8 million subscribing members, up 31% year on year.
Overall, Baidu’s third-quarter results were solid, with the company returning to steady growth and the effects of its active changes beginning to show.
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