Chinese tech giants Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Baidu Inc. have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to cooperate in the development of indoor-based mobile internet technology.

With the cooperation, Huawei and Baidu intend to advance the development of mobile internet applications based on indoor scenarios.

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Huawei's president of the Small Cell Product Line, Peter Zhou said the collaboration between the two Chinese firms is aimed at helping operators upgrade their solutions. One of the benefits also include opening up additional pipeline capacity and resources.

"The cooperation with Huawei will not only serve to further enhance Baidu Map in indoor coverage ratio and user experience in indoor scenarios, but also helpful for probing indoor navigation, indoor precise marketing and other new businesses, and also will be very beneficial to Baidu's strategy in the mobile Internet industry." said Guangfu Su, Baidu's director of LBS Domain.

"Huawei's Service Anchor has a strong capability to open network resources, one of the tools essential for developing and exploring new business models and applications for use in indoor scenarios." Su added.

Last October, Baidu had invested US$10 million in Finnish-based mapping service provider IndoorAtlas to develop new indoor GPS systems.

IndoorAtlas had developed software that allows smartphones to identify a user's indoor location using the Earth's magnetic field.

The search engine giant had also collaborated with Finnish communications and information technology firm Nokia to improve its location-based services for Chinese users traveling abroad.

Baidu is focusing heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) to improve its technologies including advertising, speech recognition and other computing tasks.

Huawei, on the other hand, is focusing on fifth generation (5G) and ICT technologies for smart cities. The Chinese telecom giant recently tested a 400Mbps wireless network at the Wembley Stadium in the U.K., in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and EE Ltd.

TagsHuawei, Indoor Mobile Internet, Service Anchor