Baidu partners with Symbian Foundation to enable “Box Computing” onSymbian platform

China’s largest search engine Baidu and the Symbian Foundation have announced a strategic initiative where the two parties will co-establish a joint laboratory to stimulate the development and launch of wireless “box computing” that will be tightly integrated with the Symbian platform. Combining Symbian’s wireless expertise in smartphone platforms and Baidu’s R&D strength in search engines, the two will drive the joint development, integration and launch of wireless “box computing” within the Symbian platform architecture. This will enable application and web developers to incorporate robust search functionality into their applications and leverage this "platform within a platform" to expand the Symbian/Baidu ecosystem, bringing new applications and user experiences to Symbian devices and extending the reach of Baidu in the mobile marketplace.

Symbian Foundation will open the necessary platform technology interfaces for Baidu to enable wireless "box computing" deep within the Symbian middleware layer, facilitating the full integration of Baidu’s wireless "box computing" into the Symbian platform. Both sides intend to encourage third-party developers to incorporate "box computing" in applications and web services that support Symbian and the companies will jointly provide a complete "box computing" platform solution to handset manufacturers and operators. To promote "box computing" innovation on Symbian, the results of the Box Computing Joint Laboratory will be shared with the entire mobile industry and be made available through the Symbian Foundation’s open source efforts.