The biggest mergers and acquisitions on China's internet have settled at $1.85 billion a price

According to the reporter yesterday, Baidu and 91 have begun to gradually integrate work, including platform data sharing, channel division plans.

Anxious Baidu with 91

"The acquisition of 91 will significantly enhance our mobile application distribution capabilities and further enhance Baidu's dominance in China's booming mobile internet ecosystem." "For this deal, Li was appraised yesterday.

He said: "91 Wireless in addition to the application provider, but also a mobile phone game operators." Mobile games in China's rapid development, the acquisition will help Baidu better efforts to cultivate and support the developer community, laying the position of Baidu in the mobile gaming market, and make Baidu has its own application distribution and add channel strong assistance. ”

In Bat (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) three giants, Baidu finally found the mobile internet "ticket."

July 2013 data show that domestic users through Baidu and 91 platform to download the total number of applications up to 69 million, and most of the downloads from mobile devices. and 91 in the profit model, business has become a mature system. Games and ads are two of their biggest sources of revenue, with 91 already gathering 100,000 of developers. A Baidu personage appraises, the Acquisition 91, in the entrance, the distribution, the ecology three aspects to the Baidu Mobile layout has the reinforcement; the distribution market of the application store may shuffle.

In fact, before the acquisition by Baidu, 91CEO Hu Zemin has been doing a two-hand preparation: "Either sold or listed." 91 of the listing is ready to start in 2012, until the beginning of 2013, the network Dragon issued a notice, proposed to split 91 wireless business in Hong Kong gem independent listing. But over the same period, 91 were also considering selling, with at least three negotiators.

A person close to Hu Zemin told reporters yesterday that the real move to Hu Zemin's decision to sell rather than go public was largely due to the successful bidding of the deal in 360.

Two years ago, 360 has not officially involved in the field of mobile phone assistants, then 360 adopted the strategy is the United Network Dragon set up a research and development center, and sent research and development personnel into the network to help develop a new version of 91 mobile phone assistant, but then 360 off 91, the introduction of their own independent application 360 The two sides broke up.

Then let Hu Zemin feel threatened is that 360 mobile phone assistants from the end of January 2012 to June, the user scale explosion, almost only half a year, did the net dragon years doing things.

Those close to Hu Zemin said that the same period of Baidu is also with 360 in the search field played, the market value was 360 lay a lot. "If Baidu can dig a hole in the 360 backyard, the best hole is 91." "For Baidu, the search entrance is at war, and if there is no access to the distribution of applications on the move, it will be dangerous," the pressure of Baidu has determined 91 high prices. ”

And with Jinshan Network CEO Fu said, "Baidu out of A (91) listed will never be able to give the price." At this point, for entrepreneurs, the first is the pursuit of business returns. ”

Integration worries

After the formal signing, if all goes well, the deal is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2013, with 91 becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Baidu and continuing to operate as an independent company under the leadership of its current management team.

But the future 91 in personnel and business how to effectively integrate with Baidu? This is still the unresolved issue of China's largest internet merger.

Baidu also has its own application distribution class application Baidu handset assistant, if two simultaneous operation, not only disperses the fund, the energy, also easily causes the hand to hand to fight.

Baidu has no clear response to this. Baidu officially said yesterday that after completing the acquisition, 91 would continue to operate independently, and that the current management would remain in office.

And before the Dragon Group chairman Liu Dejian in the company's intranet published titled "Another Journey ――dj to 91 students of a letter" revealed that, according to the agreement between the two parties, 91 of all business related personnel will be in the contract after the entry into force to join Baidu, and said: "The contract agreed, two years after the end of the journey, You can choose to return to the Dragon family or continue to stay in Baidu. "This statement also means that the acquisition of 91 of the staff have a lock-up period, at least two years of work in Baidu."

According to the reporter understands, Baidu and 91 already started to carry on the integration work gradually, including the platform data sharing, the channel divides the plan and so on.

Hu Zemin believes that more than 91 years has been the establishment of a broad developer ecosystem, and through the implementation of the Synergy Baidu platform, such as the use of Baidu's cloud storage system and Baidu's developer tools, will make 91 of the growth rate further accelerated.

A Baidu personage further adds to the reporter, 91 has the developer's community, the portal, has the game access, the Push, the Cross-platform, the social, the monetization, the data statistics and so on the support service to the developer, this with the Baidu Mobile cloud ability, will form a formidable close loop which faces the developer. After the acquisition, Baidu on the mobile internet will form a search + store + Cloud Platform of the complete ecology.

But in addition to the business, management problems may follow, "the inclusion of people, cultural integration, has just begun." "After the takeover of the internet industry, after Youku bought potatoes, most of the potato executives left their jobs and their performance slipped."

Another worry is the law. 91 of the main business 91 assistants have long been in the gray area of the market, mainly based on the jailbreak Apple to provide pirated applications download and access to a large number of users. However, as the domestic market environment changes, it may even be associated with the increase in copyright protection policy risk, or will lead to the loss of 91 of the soil to survive. In particular, with the completion of mergers and acquisitions, suspended 91 of the jailbreak, piracy, whether to transfer to the U.S.-listed companies Baidu, is still unknown.