12 years ago, Baidu spent US$1.9 billion to buy an expensive "mobile Internet ticket", which will soon become history. Today, according to official news from 91 Assistant, the application will completely stop all services starting from 23:59 on September 27, 2025, including but not limited to mobile phone connection management, file transfer, application installation and uninstallation, system cleaning and other functions.
Officials recommend that users back up relevant data in a timely manner during this period. After the service is terminated, the user's data in 91 Assistant will be permanently lost and cannot be retrieved in any way. In addition, 91 Assistant will provide refunds to users who are still in the membership period, but users need to actively apply for refunds. Users who do not actively apply for refunds will not be able to receive refunds.
As of press time, Baidu had not responded.
As an iconic asset that Baidu acquired for US$1.9 billion in 2013, its discontinuation not only means the end of a product's life cycle, but also reflects the profound changes in the entire mobile application distribution industry and the end of the early dividends of the mobile Internet.
In the mobile era, 91 Wireless gained popularity in the market largely by relying on its once-largest iOS "jailbreak" platform in China, which allowed it to gather a large number of users and then achieve revenue through advertising, game interoperability, etc. However, this also burdened it with the original sin of its business model. Data shows that in 2013, 91 Mobile Assistant had more than 100 million users on iOS and Android platforms; as a content distribution platform, 91 Wireless has been downloaded more than 10 billion times.
Among the three BAT giants at that time, Tencent had already obtained the "ship ticket" of WeChat and laid out the app store; Alibaba laid out the mobile entrance through UC browser and a series of "buy, buy, buy". Only Baidu urgently needs to find a truly platform-level product in the mobile Internet field.
Baidu's acquisition of 91 Wireless is seen as a key move in the mobile Internet strategy. Its price of US$1.9 billion can almost be called a "sky-high price." This surpassed Yahoo's US$1 billion acquisition of Alibaba in 2005 and became the largest merger and acquisition in the history of China's Internet at that time. The market value of NetDragon, the parent company of 91 Wireless, was only about US$1.6 billion at the time.
For Baidu, which has yet to get a ticket to the mobile Internet, if 91 Wireless's platform is grafted with its own mobile applications, it will find a larger distribution channel. In addition to mobile search and Baidu map businesses, it will once again gain a mobile business with over 100 million users. The three mobile services respectively represent several potential entrances to the future mobile Internet: maps, voice and APP distribution.
However, the closed nature of the iOS system naturally conflicts with third-party tools. 91 Assistant tried to transform and integrate with Baidu games and other businesses, but it was never able to break through the value ceiling of tool-based products, nor was it effectively integrated into the Baidu ecosystem. As major domestic mobile phone manufacturers have established their own app stores, and super apps have restructured traffic distribution methods, the entry value of traditional app stores has been continuously diluted in recent years.
In February 2020, Baidu announced that it would offline 91 Assistant and Android Market, but some services are still running. Until the latest announcement, it really brought an end to this product.
This is not the first time Baidu has encountered setbacks in major investment decisions. On November 16, 2020, Baidu announced that it would acquire YY Live for approximately US$3.6 billion. However, more than three years later, this originally ambitious acquisition was ultimately scrapped.
From the mobile Internet era to the AI era, the logic of industrial competition has undergone fundamental changes. Competition in the mobile Internet stage largely revolves around traffic entrance and user duration. As a distribution channel, application stores have occupied an important position for a certain period of time. However, in today's AI-driven world, the core of competition has shifted to the deep integration of data, algorithms and computing power, as well as the ability to integrate ecosystems in vertical scenarios. When the entire industry looks back at the forefront of AI, how to learn lessons from this expensive acquisition in the mobile era and establish deep integration capabilities of technology, products and ecology has become even more important.