Chinese search company Baidu, at its annual developer conference, announced Baidu Explorer, a new web browser for Android handsets. In the face of heated competition in the Android mobile browser market, the Baidu Explorer, according to its developers, is around 20% faster than the prime browsers in the market, largely due to a new engine nicknamed T5 (T for Taikonaut, or Chinese astronaut, and 5 for HTML5) . When tested, the browser was at first insipid at best, but after enabling the T5 engine, which involved downloading a 5MB file, the browser showed substantial performance enhancements.
The numbers were in total agreement, and before enabling the engine, the browser was insipid at best, scoring a measly 276 in the HTML5 Test. But after enabling T5, the Explorer really did top the charts in HTML5 compatibility, scoring a massive 482 out of 500, as compared to its counterparts Chrome(371), Firefox(349), and Opera (367). The new browser also seemed to beat its competitors in JavaScript tests, according to benchmark figures from Baidu. It also includes other features such as multi-task rendering, intelligent Chinese language search, and access to location based services.
The Baidu Explorer comes integrated with the Baidu Search Engine, just like Google Search comes with Google Chrome. Baidu, which dominates search in China, looks to divert more traffic to its search engine through the browser. This strategy would become important especially in China, where it is estimated that most users are access the internet through their phones.
The Chinese Search Company posted a revenue of $859 million last quarter, and also aims to have the browser pre-installed on 80% of Chinese Android handsets by the end of the year.
The Chinese company also seems keen to build a market outside China, and signed a deal with a telecom company in Egypt to promote the software by providing it to subscribers. The company has also entered South East Asia and quietly entered the Brazilian market. Baidu’s long term goal is to generate half its revenue from outside China by 2020.
The browser can isn’t downloadable from the Play Store yet, but can be obtained for Android 2.2+ users from here. A version for Windows Phone 7.5 Mango has also been released.
