Baidu reports better-than-expected financial performance in 2015

Baidu, the world's largest Chinese-language search engine, released its annual financial report on Friday, beating industrial expectations thanks to accelerating growth from the mobile Internet service market.

The Internet giant raked in 66.382 billion yuan (10.16 billion U.S.dollars) in revenue last year, up 35.3 percent year on year, and beating Wall Street analysts' prediction of 66.3 billion yuan.

It's net profit was 33.664 billion yuan in 2015, up 155.1 percent year on year, according to the unaudited financial report.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, Baidu raked in 18.699 billion yuan in revenue, up 33.1 percent year on year, with income from mobile services accounting for 56 percent of total revenue.

The NASDAQ-listed company saw its shares rise by 11.24 percent thanks to the positive sentiment generated by the impressive financial report.

Baidu service users from mobile devices surged last year, with active mobile search engine users reaching 657 million by the end of 2015, up 21 percent year on year, while those using Baidu's map service reached 302 million, up 43 percent year on year.

"2015 is a landmark year for Baidu as we made breakthroughs in online marketing and services. We will continue to benefit from rising demand for services thanks to China's continuous consumption upgrading," said Robin Li, board chair and CEO of Baidu.

The leading search engine started to make forays into consumer services such as group buying, online payment and food delivery in 2015 and has become a integrated platform linking technology, content and service. Endit