Baidu, AutoNavi Fighting for Navigation Market Share, Offering Apps for Free

September 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Baidu, AutoNavi Fighting for Navigation Market Share, Offering Apps for Free

By Emma Lee on August 29, 2013

Baidu

Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) announced yesterday that it would offer Baidu Navigation for free ever after. The company promised today to refund the users who purchased their navigation services on both Android and iOS platforms. AutoNavi (NASDAQ:AMAP), a leading map service in China, followed suit shortly afterwards, declaring that its navigation software will also be offered for free. These moves will undoubtedly overhaul the navigation market. Compared with dedicated navigation machines usually priced at over 300 yuan ($48.67), Baidu and AutoNavi navigation apps once priced at 30 yuan and 50 yuan respectively are much cost-effective choices. Let alone the services are free now. AutoNavi Navigation has been pre-installed or downloaded for more than 70 million times, according to financial report of the company.Baidu Navigation

The V2.0 version of Baidu Navigation added a new semantic searching feature. It also supports 3D and electronic eye navigation.

Free navigation software is an inevitable trend, according to a representative of Baidu Navigation. The market of China’s mobile map and navigation market is expected to reach 281 million yuan this year, according to iResearch report. However, the monetization models of navigation companies limit the expansion of this market.

Screenshot of AutoNavi Navigation

Maybe that’s why AutoNavi’s free service plan is badly received by the stock market, which recorded a 20% slump in AutoNavi shares as of this morning. In addition, the company has already posed a 57 % drop in net profit and a 5% decline in revenue for the second quarter this year. The free service plan may further drag down the company’s performance.

 

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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