By Wang Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-02 14:26

Chinese search engine Baidu.com is launching a new service that enables its users to access the company's search services through cellphones.

By dialing a number -11616690 - users can search everything from the nearest restaurant to the most formidable scientific terms without a computer or Internet connection, according to a statement by Baidu.

The new service is in its beta version and is now only available from 9 am to 9 pm every week day. All services are free of charge. But users have to pay the telephone companies for the calls.

Different from Google's Voice Local Search, which was first launched more than two years ago and was run automatically by a speech-to-text conversion software, Baidu's Voice Search Service is done with professional staff.

The staff, sitting in front of computer terminals, search Baidu.com in response to users' requests.

Currently, the service is not available through SMS. But a Baidu Voice Search staff member said yesterday the company plans to make it available in the future.

Although Baidu is the first search engine to offer voice search service in China, it's not the first company to provide telephone inquiry service in the country. China Telecom and China Netcom have been offering similar services for years and regard it as one of the most important future revenue generators.

"Baidu's new service is unlikely to be designed to take on China Telecom and China Netcom," said Liu Bin, chief analyst from research house BDA China. "I think they just want to expand their services to China's millions of non-Internet users."

According to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the number of China's Internet users grew 31.7 percent in June to 162 million.

Although China was expected to surpass the United States in terms of Internet users last year, Chinese Internet users reached only 12.3 percent of the country's population, lower than the world average of 17.6 percent.