BEIJING, Dec. 22 -- Google Inc, the most-used Internet search engine, ruled out taking on a Chinese mainland partner as the United States company continues to lose market share to rival Baidu.com Inc, Bloomberg News reported.

"We have confidence in our current approach" in the mainland, Lee Kai-fu, California-based Google's vice president of China operations, said Thursday at a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan Province. He declined to provide more details on the company's strategy in China's mainland.

Overseas Internet companies have struggled to operate in the mainland because of rising competition from local operators.

Online auction provider EBay Inc and portal Yahoo! Inc both turned to agreements with Chinese companies to retain a presence in the mainland. Google may lose market share to Baidu in the next year, according to Credit Suisse.

Google has a 16 percent share of the China search-engine market, compared with Beijing-based Baidu's 50 percent and Yahoo's 16 percent, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys.

Baidu's market share could rise to 56 percent next year, nearly triple Google's projected 19 percent, Credit Suisse Group wrote in a Sept. 28 report.

Yahoo last year agreed to pay 1 billion U.S. dollars for 40 percent of Internet retailer Alibaba.com Corp in a deal that handed control of Yahoo's local unit to China's largest online shopping site.

EBay, the world's largest online auction site, on Wednesday said it would close its China unit and form a venture with Beijing-based Tom Online Inc.

Revenue from Google's non-U.S. business is rising as a proportion of total sales, reaching 44 percent in the third quarter from 39 percent a year earlier, according to a company presentation posted on its Website.

Google and Chunghwa Telecom Co, Taiwan's largest provider of telephone services, said Thursday that they would offer a mobile search service from Jan. 1 and share the revenue including advertising income.

Taipei-based Chunghwa has 41 percent of Taiwan's cell-phone market with 8.42 million subscribers at the end of August, according to a company presentation.

Chunghwa is expanding revenue from its mobile service amid declining sales in its fixed-line and long-distance businesses. Cell-phone services are the largest contributor to Chunghwa's revenue, accounting for 40 percent of the company's 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in third-quarter sales.

Mobile revenue grew 0.5 percent for the first nine months of this year from a year earlier, while fixed-line sales declined 6.4 percent, according to a company presentation.

(Source: Shanghai Daily)