Baidu Inc.'s quarterly profit beat expectations thanks to a rise in mobile search users and Chairman Robin Li flagged more investments in robotic cars and on-demand services over the next five years.

 

China's biggest search engine provider also forecast better-than-anticipated revenue as advertising goes mobile and online. Baidu said it expects second-quarter revenue of $3.1 billion to $3.2 billion (20.1 billion to 20.7 billion yuan).

 

The results demonstrate the strength of Baidu's core business, allowing the company to spend billions to expand into new areas like self-driving cars.

 

It expects to mass-produce autonomous vehicles by 2020, two years after its cars first hit the road. That's despite the lack of a business plan or specific target markets beyond China, Li said.

 

"We are aggressively beefing up research and development in this area both here in China and our U.S. r&d center in Silicon Valley," Li told analysts on a post-earnings conference call. "We will worry about the business model later on."

 

Total revenue for the first quarter rose 24 percent to 15.8 billion yuan ($2.4 billion). Net income was 2.0 billion yuan.

 

The search giant is "right in the middle" of the investment cycle for on-demand services while heavy spending on driverless cars was yet to come, Baidu CFO Jennifer Li said.