Baidu indices indicate decline in Apple's China sales

Baidu Inc released its first indices tracking Chinese consumer behavior and their preferences, indicating a change in employment status of some segments and predicting a drop in sales for Apple Inc.

Based on mapping query data from China's biggest search engine, the indicators utilize the positions of the users, the 25 billion location requests they seek and the wi-fi hotspots they log into across the country. Baidu handles 70 percent to 80 percent of all online searches in China and its mapping service boasts 700 million users.

Wu Haishan, a senior data scientist, said Baidu will start selling more granular data next month which is capable of tracking the performance of specific cities, industries and even brands like Apple. The indicators will be released at the start of each month.