Chinese search engine Baidu.com may acquire Zongheng.com, an Internet literature website owned by Perfect World, for between CNY300 million and CNY400 million.
According to reports in Chinese local media, neither party has given further comments on the rumor.
Zongheng.com has reportedly lost tens of millions of RMB every year and it may fall apart at any time. Therefore, Perfect World, which is an online game company, is eager to sell it or introduce outside investment. At present, the negotiation between Baidu and Perfect World has reportedly entered a substantive stage and Baidu offers CNY300 million to CNY400 million to acquire this website.
Latest statistics provided by Zongheng.com show that the website has storage of over 100,000 works; it has daily visits from over 2.6 million individual IP addresses; and its pageviews daily are over 60 million. So far, over one-third of its traffic is from mobile devices. From 2012 to 2013, its mobile traffic increased by about 50%.
By possibly purchasing this site, Baidu.com enhances its stance in the busy Chinese e-book sector.