Chinese search giant Baidu has today announced a strategic partnership with Qualcomm to offer free personal cloud storage to Android devices powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors.
The limited promotion will offer users 15GB of storage for one year and another 15GB of storage for the lifetime of the device after they activate Baidu’s cloud service on a qualifying device.
Baidu also said it is optimizing its cloud service using Qualcomm Reference Designs. Specifically, it will be tailored to suit the Snapdragon S4 MSM 8×25 processor and the Snapdragon S4 MSM8x25Q processor. The service should arrive before the end of the year.
Eligible devices include: the Huawei G330D/G330C, the Coolpad 7266, the K-touch W760, Hisense U950, Lenovo S686. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon line of processors has become one of the top choices for Android smartphones, especially in China.
“This Baidu cloud service offering demonstrates Baidu’s ability to launch a service that covers developers across the value chain spanning chipset to software. This is an important step for Baidu to be competitive and integrate across the whole industry chain, and it will help bring end users a wider variety of more integrated and higher quality services,” said Jing Wang, vice president of engineering of Baidu.
Baidu has identified the cloud as an area of substantial investment. CEO Robin Li declared in September at the company’s annual developer conference that China has entered the cloud age. He reiterated the claim earlier this month by noting in an earnings statement that mobile and cloud represent Baidu’s vision for the “future of China’s Internet”. It is backing that belief up with a $1.6 billion investment in a cloud computing center.
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