Han Yimin, author of Tencent's “Frontline”
On April 18, Baidu and China Telecom announced in Beijing that they had reached a comprehensive strategic cooperation. The two sides will carry out in-depth strategic cooperation in the fields of smart home, smart cloud, intelligent connectivity and search, intelligent driving, and 5G. Baidu Chairman and CEO Li Yanhong and China Telecom Chairman Ke Ruiwen attended the signing ceremony. Baidu Vice President Zhang Dongchen and China Telecom Deputy General Manager Wang Guoquan signed the agreement on behalf of both parties.
Li Yanhong said that artificial intelligence technology is becoming a huge driving force for empowering the social economy and accelerating industrial transformation, and operators and AI platform-based enterprises will each play a critical role. Baidu and China Telecom will use their respective strengths to spawn a “chemical reaction” through comprehensive strategic cooperation, which will not only unleash a profound impact at the industrial level, but also expand more new communication application scenarios based on artificial intelligence, so that users can enjoy a beautiful experience that has never been seen before.
Corewen said, “With China Telecom and Baidu deepening strategic cooperation this time, China Telecom and Baidu can complement each other's strengths in the fields of 5G, the Internet of Things, smart homes, etc., further enrich cooperation methods on the original basis, deepen, implement, and thoroughly cooperate, and truly create good products that meet the needs of users and promote industrial transformation and upgrading.”
Currently, Baidu and China Telecom have begun specific cooperation in various areas such as smart speakers, DICT and cloud, edge computing, traffic, and IDC.
In the future, Baidu will cooperate closely with China Telecom at multiple levels to promote smart speaker technology interface, product innovation, channel promotion, and marketing cooperation, and jointly expand the growth of smart home business and accelerate the entry of smart hardware products into thousands of households. At present, sales channel cooperation based on the Xiaodu series smart speakers has covered 18 provincial telecom companies.
Based on Baidu's intelligent cloud ABC trinity development strategy, which is highly compatible with China Telecom's DICT ecosystem and IoT ecosystem, cooperation between the two sides in the field of intelligent cloud is also continuing.
With the accelerated implementation of artificial intelligence and the advent of the 5G commercial era, there are broad prospects for cooperation between the two sides in the field of 5G+AI. Currently, Baidu and China Telecom have carried out a number of collaborations in the field of edge computing, the core technology of 5G, and will also actively explore space for in-depth cooperation and innovation in 5G edge computing platform services, capability pooling, and AI technology research and development. Furthermore, the two sides will cooperate in the field of intelligent driving to jointly enhance the influence of the industry and promote the integration of 5G telecom deployment and Baidu Apollo's autonomous driving capabilities.
Baidu and China Telecom will also continue to cooperate to enhance complementarity of online and offline resources in areas such as smart applets, traffic products, and brand promotion.
Baidu said that the current strategic cooperation between Baidu and China Telecom is based on the deep alignment between Baidu's AI strategy and China Telecom's grand strategy, and is also an important milestone in the cooperation between the two sides.