Alibaba Teams up With China's Largest Telcom, Aims To Sell Smartphones To Rural Customers

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, aims to cater rural areas of China instead of markets in overseas in its near term expansion.

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.

Yahoo Inc. Will Have To Prove That It Can Survive Without Alibaba

The company will have to show what it takes to strive and thrive on its own after parting ways with Alibaba

Yahoo Inc. and Alibaba Group parted ways a long time ago. It was reported that according to Yahoo latest news that the company planned to spin off its shares from Alibaba Group Holding few months ago. However analysts were concerned about how this decision will affect Yahoo in the coming times. According to Harry McCracken, he says that the American based multinational corporation will have to prove the world that it has what it takes to survive as well as thrive on its own. It was believed that Alibaba boosted the company performance in the market.

Harry McCracken is well reputed tech analyst and editor who work for Fast Company. McCracken recently wrote a well detailed report which mentioned about how the CEO of Yahoo has been a catalyst in the company’s recent performances. He said that many analysts and experts wrote off Yahoo once the decision of spinning off shares from the e-commerce giant was announced. Analysts did not expect the internet company to make a comeback. However, everyone now agrees that the stakes of Alibaba that the company owns has saved the company as well as its CEO, Marrisa Mayers, from all the view of negativity and hopelessness by people about the core business.

Harry McCracken said “The Yahoo stock has done really well during her tenure but that is because it was a way to invest in Alibaba and they are about to spin off their Alibaba investment. So moving forward, Yahoo has to do well by being Yahoo.” What’s left is that the company will have to step ahead and prove that it can perform on its own merits as well to bring success to the business like old times.

McCracken said that Marrisa Mayers has changed the company for good. Had it been not for her, the company must have been under the shadows of someone else or struggling in the market. The tech editor mentioned that Ms. Mayers has been quite successful in putting the right building blocks at the right time to revamp its business. Through her leadership and management, the company now has a fighting chance to stand and compete against its peers and competitors in the industry.

In her tenure so far, the company has managed to make smart purchases and acquisitions which has helped it to flourish, for instance the acquisition of Flurry. Moreover, Ms. Mayer worked hard to expand the staff of mobile developers from 50 to 500 to excel in that field.

It is quite likely that Yahoo can now stand on its own and perform well in the market.