Alibaba is not satisfied with just being the largest e-commerce company in China, now the firm wants to invest heavily to create an in-house mobile OS. According to a company spokesperson Alibaba will pump $150 million per year into the platform.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal an employee claims that its Aliyun OS is being sought out more frequently by Chinese manufacturers who are not happy with Google’s Android iOS.
The Aliyun OS would be focused on low-end smartphones and come equipped with Alibaba’s suite of cloud services.
Alibaba started development on the Aliyun OS in order to attract more users to its e-commerce services. Since launching in 2011 Aliyun has been sold on just one million smartphones. Because the OS is cloud based users are more dependent on active internet connections than Android, iOS , Windows and other smartphone operating systems.
The Aliyun OS can be found on the K-Touch W800 and the Haier Zing.
Aliyun could leverage the Chinese market more easily than Google Android thanks to Alibaba’s strong relationship with officials in the country.
Alibaba has dedicated 1,200 people to the Aliyun project.
With Samsung recently losing a patent battle on Google Android based devices and China’s reluctance to work with Google it is possible that Alibaba could carve out a nice mobile OS niche for itself.
With low-end devices currently the focus of Alibaba’s team Google Android users will likely continue to buy devices at an increasing rate, allowing Google to continue its domination over the worldwide cellular market.
