Baidu gets ahead in the cloud


The Chinese internet giant now has more than 200m cloud users

The number of new users of cloud-based computing rose by 32% year-on-year to more than 200m, according to Baidu senior manager Ning Jing. The number of monthly active users also topped 80m, showing the increasing popularity of using web-based storage services.

Mobile devices accounted for nearly 60% of usage across the platform thanks to improvements in wifi and a general shift away from desktop computers.

Aside from cloud services, Baidu is currently working to integrate artificial intelligence and big data analytics into its cloud offering.  However, despite the increase in cloud traffic, Baidu is still trailing behind its close rival Tencent which had more than 300m users at the start of 2014.