Hier wat aanvullende opmerkingen uit Baidu's '18Q2 conference call van hedenmorgen.
Robin Li (ceo):
Aside from hospitality industry, DuerOS is also making inroads in the auto industry, forming partnerships with the likes of BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor, Hyundai, Kia, Chery, BAIC and FAW Group and BYTON to allow car owners to activate AI input modalities such as voice, image and facial recognition to enable closed loop services including order movie ticket and booking hotels.
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On Apollo, we are moving at China speed. Earlier this month, we worked with King Long Motor to launch the first fully autonomous Level 4 minibus, Apolong, a shuttle bus built without steering wheel. Neolix Technology also launched an L4 vehicle powered by Apollo and minicars (00:11:51) for cargo deliveries this month. We are excited about the commercialization of Apollo-powered vehicles, which is a testament to Apollo's comprehensive ecosystem from AI technology to OEM software, to hardware integration to Tier 1 parts supplier, to IoV-enabled back-end infrastructure. China is the largest auto market in the world, with 28.9 million new vehicles sold last year, presenting a huge opportunity for Apollo to making driving easier and help provide environmental and traffic solutions.
In March last year, I challenged our team to open source Baidu's autonomous driving platform and release a commercially viable vehicle. Within 16 months, our team worked with OEM partners to release two Level 4 vehicles off the assembly line, which is not an easy feat in the automotive industry where manufacturing delays are common.
Herman Yu (cfo):
Our strategy to transform Baidu into an AI-first company to drive synergy and accelerate long-term growth, while redirecting management attention and resources from non-core businesses to new businesses, is seeing good traction. In the second quarter, feed plus AI businesses together made up almost 20% of Baidu Core revenue, excluding spinoffs. Together, feed plus AI businesses grew over 150% year-over-year.
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On the AI initiatives, both DuerOS and Apollo are growing very, very quickly. We're seeing tremendous growth or adoption rate from the users who use our IoT devices and we see a lot of OEMs strong interest to work with that. But these two business lines are in its very early stage. So, we do not expect any meaningful contribution, revenue contribution in the coming quarters. But having said that, I would say that these two business lines are the most advanced ones among its peers. If anyone start to be able to generate meaningful revenue, we will be the first one to achieve that goal.
Especially for Apollo, I think we enjoy an advantage that the Chinese government is very supportive of this kind of technological innovation and are willing to cooperate on the infrastructure level which means that they would want to install sensors on the road, so that cars do not need to buy very expensive LiDAR or other type of sensors in order to drive autonomously. So we are very excited about the future of this two new initiatives.
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Vraag van een analist:
So Apollo has started to make it into a cars or minibus and in Level 4, I think it's a great accomplishment. So I wonder from here to Level 5, what are some of the milestones you guys going to do to accomplish that? How long it may take, so from here to Level 5?
Robin Li:
...that involves a lot of ecosystem partners and we are working many of them on Level 3, Level 4 and we are also working with the government to define better infrastructure or smarter roads for autonomous driving. So, that's why you see that the Level 4 minibus actually launched before any passenger cars with Level 3 technologies.
They are going to be used in the designated areas that are slower feed, which will make sure that the safety is not an issue. So, the Apollo ecosystem is a very comprehensive one. We will be selling simulation software. We'll be selling HD Map, we are selling ACU, which is Apollo Computing Units consisting of both hardware and software, we will have solutions for valet parking.
We have a broad spectrum of services offering to our partners. So we will, as we move forward, we'll be able to monetize from both Level 3 and Level 4 and probably some other related areas.