Google ‘very positive’ about mobile prospects in China

Google Inc. is “very positive” about prospects for mobile content in China and believes the country has a unique role to play in developing the market, John Liu, Google’s head of sales in China, said Thursday.

“China is a part of the global Internet market that, with the size of its customer base and its level of development, you’ve got to treat China seriously,” Liu said at a technology conference in Beijing. “China will play a unique role in developing mobile technology and we’re very positive about the future of the mobile Internet in China.”

Google must rely on revenue from customers for display advertising and export marketing in China, the world’s largest Internet market by users, after shutting its search engine there following a dispute with the government over censorship. The exit has allowed rival Baidu Inc. to dominate the local search market.

Google has yet to receive a license in China for its map business under a new licensing system introduced last May. The regulations required applications for licenses be made by March 31 to avoid “administrative actions” that will be taken by July 1. China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping has pledged to close sites that fail to comply.

Liu declined to comment on the state of the application for a map license when approached by reporters after his presentation.

China renewed Google’s Internet-service license in July through 2012 after the Mountain View, Calif.-based company stopped automatically redirecting users of its Chinese service to an unfiltered Hong Kong site.

Baidu aims to boost its share of the mobile-search market to match its share of searches made on personal computers, Baidu Vice President Shen Haoyu told the same conference today, without supplying figures for market share.

“Our market share on cell phone search will be the same as PC,” Shen said. “We are not there yet, but our share is growing, and growing very fast.”