Baidu index projects a drop for Apple sales

HONG KONG— Baidu Inc. released its first indexes tracking the state of China’s economy and consumers, indicating a rise in unemployment and predicting a drop in sales for Apple Inc.

Based on mapping query data from China’s biggest search engine, the indicators employ the positions of users, the 25 billion location requests they seek and the Wi-Fi hot spots they log into across the country.

Baidu handles 70 to 80 per cent of all online searches in China and its mapping service boasts 700 million users.

From this month, the Beijing-based company will release employment and consumer indexes, both of which have showed a decline when compared to 2014.

Wu Haishan, a senior data scientist, said Baidu would start selling more granular data next month, which is capable of tracking the performance of specific cities, industries and even brands such as Apple. The indicators will be released at the start of each month.

“Such analysis should be very useful for the likes of hedge funds, investors or managers at companies,” he said.

“It will be charged based on volume of the data that you are interested in, for example how many cities, how many provinces or how many firms you are interested in.”

Investors and analysts have long questioned the methodology of Chinese government-issued statistics, one reason why some economy-watchers turn to indexes compiled by private sources such as e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding and payments network UnionPay.

Baidu’s indicator release coincided with the abrupt and unexplained suspension of one such well-watched gauge, an unofficial purchasing managers index compiled with the help of China Minsheng Banking Corp.

In a report demonstrating the potential of the research, Baidu compared the number of people searching its maps for specific Apple stores in mainland China with the tech giant’s revenues across greater China, which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Baidu’s researchers say they can project Apple’s sales in the region, on the assumption that mainland con- sumers behave in much the same way as in the other two locales.

The 15.4 per cent rise in queries during the last quarter of 2015 compared with a 14 per cent rise in Apple’s sales.

When searches fell 24.5 per cent in the March quarter, sales for Greater China dropped by 26 per cent.

“Based on our analysis of latest data, we project that the Apple’s revenue of second quarter 2016 may be down around 20 per cent on a yearover year basis,” it said.

Apple, which is expected to report its financial results on Tuesday, declined to comment. The greater China region is the company’s largest market outside the U.S.