Bloomberg 16 July 2013
Baidu Inc., owner of China’s largest search engine, agreed to buy app store 91 Wireless for $1.9 billion in its biggest announced acquisition to gain a greater share of the mobile user market.
The company will acquire the majority stake owned by NetDragon Websoft Inc. (777) and all other shares, Baidu said in a statement today. Investors in 91 Wireless on March 27 included companies controlled by PCCW Ltd. Chairman Richard Li and Temasek Holdings Pte, a separate filing showed.
The deal gives Baidu control over China’s most popular third-party store for smartphone apps as it tries to navigate the shift from desktop computing, where it has 82 percent of the nation’s searches, to mobile devices. Baidu’s mobile app had 9 percent of China’s wireless customers as of April, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.S. leader Google Inc., facing a similar challenge, backed the Android operating system and started its own store to gain share against Apple Inc.