Dell is to attempt to break into the Chinese tablet computer and mobile phone market by signing a partnership with China's top search engine, Baidu.

The Texan computer giant plans to use Baidu, the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index, to loosen Apple's tight grip on the lucrative Far East market. There are more than 900 million mobile phone subscribers in China and the country is also one of the fastest growing markets for tablets. Dell wants to tap into this pool of potential buyers by expanding its range of cloud utilising devices.

Last week, Beijing-based Baidu released a new mobile application platform for the ever-increasing number of people who access the Internet through their mobile phones.

Baidu is now planning to adapt Google's Android operating system to replace Google with itself as the default search engine. Dell, meanwhile, will be looking to inject new life into its Streak 5 tablet – a five inch smartphone-tablet hybrid, which was discontinued in the US last month.

A Dell spokesperson said: "We have a partnership with Baidu and you know we have the Streak 5 tablet, so the partnership will be in that space.”

The news follows Hewlett-Packard's announcement last month that it is to stop producing its TouchPad due to disappointing sales figures – largely as a result of its inability to compete with the iPad. Around the same time, Google announced its acquisition of Motorola Mobility with the aim of boosting its standing in the smartphone market.

Dell will be hoping that its new partner, which enjoys an 80 per cent market share of the country's search engines, will help change the fate of its hitherto below par tablet sales. Dell has historically faired well in China where it boasts over 10,000 sales points but is expected by many experts to fail in its bid to displace Apple's iPad as China's tablet of choice.

Some, though, are cynical of Dell's move.

Michael Clendenin, managing director of technology consultancy RedTech Advisors, said: “I suspect this is just Dell, who has a lot of problems on the mobile and tablet front, grasping at straws to get any kind of publicity that it can to make its product more attractive.

“Ultimately in China, I still think it is Apple's game, still for the iPad and iPhone."

Dell is yet to set a release date for its new devices but it is expected to be November or December of this year.