Amazon will partner with Baidu to launch its Fire tablet in China
Amazon Inc. single-handedly dominated the online holiday shopping season this year. It was accountable for at least 36.1 percent of overall sales on Cyber Monday whereas no other big or medium sized business could contributed this much. As of yet, the company has not revealed the total sales but it was the only platform to generate such numbers in a day. The online retailer also banned the sales of Apple TV and other such devices in order to promote its own Fire product line sales on the platform. It is noted that the Fire sales have tripled since Thanksgiving Day.
As the company received overwhelming response for its Fire Tablet since Thanksgiving Day, it decided to continue the same momentum in the coming times as well. For that matter, the online retailing giant has turned towards Baidu, one of the biggest Chinese tech companies, to assist in selling Fire Tablet. It is believed that Amazon has asked China’s top search company to power its Fire tablet and launch it in the country in the near future. This is the best deal for Amazon as Google and its services are not accessible in China due to restrictions.
Fire Tablet was first launched exclusively in the United States but is now expanded and is available for purchase in China as well, all thanks to Baidu. Currently, the device is priced at around $80 (499 RMB to be precise).
In return, Amazon will make Baidu as the default search engine on Fire tablet. Tech Crunch reported, “A spokesperson for Baidu confirmed that the Chinese firm is also providing apps via 91Wireless — the Android app store it bought for $1.9 billion in 2013 — and online video via its iQiyi service, which is China’s second-largest YouTube-like site behind only Alibaba-owned Youku Tudou.”
Currently, China’s tablet market is massive as there are millions of devices available from various international and domestic brands. Many of them are much cheaper than Amazon’s Fire Tablet whereas others are more glamorous including Xiaomi’s Mi Pad 2. It cannot be predicted of as to how the Fire tablet would work in the country but its partnership would help a lot in achieving the target in the coming times.
According to a source, “Amazon’s own commerce business in China is well behind Alibaba, JD.com and others, giving it less of a launch platform than it enjoys in the U.S. and other parts of the world.” Amazon looks forward to working with Baidu in China.
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