Alibaba intends to compete with Android

According to The Wall Street Journal, the largest Chinese operator Alibaba Group plans to push the Android platform with its own OS – Aliyun, developed on the basis of Linux.

According to Zeng Ming, Director of strategic development of Alibaba Group, now there is a growing demand from vendors in China for smartphones based on the Aliyun operating system, and, according to his forecasts, by the end of this year the share of the new platform in the Chinese market will grow from the current 2% to 5%.

“In China, we can have no less strong positions than Android,” says Zeng Ming. 

He associates the possible success with the limited functionality of Android in China. Maps, search and email are not always available to users of the Celestial Empire in devices on the Google platform.  

Aliyun is currently working on Beijing Tianyu Communication Equipment smartphones sold under the K-Touch brand and on Haier Electronics Group devices. It is planned that very soon it will also appear on smartphones from other manufacturers. 

The key difference between the new OS and iOS and Android is its “cloud cover”: all applications that the user installs on the device run on remote servers.