New | Baidu seen to be lagging rivals in mergers and acquisitions activity

Ahead of mainland search engine firm Baidu's annual results announcement in the United States today, market watchers are asking whether the company has missed the boat by lagging behind rivals Alibaba and Tencent in mergers and acquisitions.

Alibaba and Tencent have proactively spent cash to strengthen their footholds as users migrate from personal computers to smartphones.

To keep users on their apps and not their rivals', they have acquired or invested in fields including social networking, digital content, online-to-offline and location-based services, mobile advertising-related technology, online travel, gaming and logistics network coverage.

By comparison, Baidu has adopted a more conservative approach to spending in preparing for the mobile internet era.

"I think it is possible that Baidu will drop out of the first-tier of internet firms and join Xiaomi in the second tier," said Liu Xingliang, the chairman of internet data analysis firm Hongmai Software. "The market valuation of Baidu already has a big difference with the other two."

Even with Alibaba shares close to an all-time low since its New York listing last year following a widely reported dispute with Beijing and a quarterly report that missed market expectations, the e-commerce giant was still worth US$217.3 billion yesterday.