Latest ALIBABA news is about the e-commerce giant being partnered with China’s largest telecom operator in order to sell smartphones that are low-cost, these smartphones are aimed to be sold to the people belonging to and residing in rural areas. The prices shall be as low as $48 which is approximately 299 RMB.
China Telecom is considered to be one of the pioneers in telecommunications industry in the country and has 186 million users. The deal that has been signed with this giant is a part of a two branched strategy for e-commerce giant. The deal visions the small cities of the country as the key to growth plans for Alibaba’s business and also YunOS, which is its operating system.
There is a series of eight smartphone models that have been developed by obscure brands such as Kingsun, Uniscope and Ctyon will consist of YunOS, Alibaba’s operating system that has been built to be competed with Android. The smartphones of this series are going to be inexpensive and will be affordable. Other a little pricier models, which are six in total, will have Taobao pre-installed in the phones. Taobao is a shopping app by Alibaba. These pricier phones shall be coming from better known manufacturers such as TCL, Hisense and Coolpad.
Alibaba news reports that these smartphones shall be sold in the stores belonging to China Telecom. There had been 15,000 retail outlets for the Chinese telecom giant in rural area in 2014 as per the reports. However the company is planning to grow its number of outlets there for further business.
According to the reports by Kantar, the company wishes to position YunOS as a trustworthy alternative to Android which is currently holding a market share of 80.4 percent in the cities of China.
Despite the moves such as that of partnership to make YunOS more powerful with Quixey or the $590 million investment in Meizu which is a smartphone maker and also uses YunOS on some of the handsets, however the OS is yet to become more reliable or popular among the natives. As of October 2014, the operating system had 10 million users only.
The e-commerce giant may have a better opportunity to expand and grow its business by targeting the rural areas. The Alibaba research unit reported that rural e-commerce market in China shall hit $75 million which is approximately $460 billion RMB by the year 2016. In this case, the residents of these rural areas are seen as spending $80 - $300 for the online shopping every year.
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