Giant Chinese web services company Baidu has come up with another addition to its many ranks, a mobile browser for Android devices called Baidu Explorer. Launched at Baidu’s annual developers conference two days ago, the company claims that the browser beats competition from Chrome, Firefox and Opera as far as speeds are concerned and this has now been verified by testing.

The new mobile browser will be available in Chinese and English and uses an engine called T5. This new search engine is claimed to be 20% faster than other rivals and this was checked out by Cnet Asia, sourced from The Next Web. Cnet found that the improvements were indeed only evident after the T5 engine was enabled with an extra 5MB download, following installation of the browser.

When testing HTML5 compatibility CNet found that Baidu Explorer scored 482/500 thrashing Chrome on 372, Firefox on 349 and also Opera that came out on 367. As well as this Baidu made benchmark figures available from JavaScript tests where Baidu also came out on top. With the majority of people in China accessing the Internet on mobile devices the hope will be that the Baidu Explorer browser will push traffic to its search facility as this is integrated. It seems that Baidu is looking to expand the new browser too as an agreement has already been signed with an Egyptian telco to use it in a bundle for subscribers.

If you want to check out Baidu Explorer then the download link is here in the form of an APK file and it’s compatible for devices running Android 2.2 or later. It doesn’t yet appear to be available from Google Play. You’ll see it’s also available for Windows Phone devices. Let us know your thoughts on this new Baidu initiative. Does it appeal to you? Maybe you’ve already checked it out and can let other readers know what you think of it? Why not send us your comments to let us know.