Alibaba launches new mobile operating software

[shakirmoledina]

China's Alibaba has taken on established players such as Google and Apple in the mobile operating system market.

It has launched its own operating system, Alyun OS, in a bid to capture the fast-growing Chinese market.

The launch comes as sales of smartphones in China, the world's largest mobile handset market, are expected to grow rapidly.

Alibaba is one the world's biggest internet conglomerates (i.e. A group of diverse companies under common ownership and run as a single organization ).

The company said the operating system will feature services such as email, internet search and support web-based applications.

"Mobile users want a more open and convenient mobile operating system (OS), one that allows them to truly enjoy all that the internet has to offer, right in the palm of their hand," said Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing.

"The cloud OS, with its use of cloud-based applications, will provide that," he added.

Hardware

Alibaba also launched K-Touch, the first smartphone to run the OS. The phone will be manufactured by handset maker Tianyu.

The company said it was also in talks to with phone manufacturers to develop low-end mobile phones that will run the operating system.

However, Alibaba said it has no plans to enter the phone manufacturing sector on its own.

"We shouldn't make a phone. We're not in that ecosystem," said Mr Wang.

He also added that the company is concentrating only on developing the operating system and was not focussing too much on the sales of mobile phones that will use the software.

"We are not responsible for selling the phone, we just provide the system, so there is no hard number," he said.

Alibaba said it plans to launch a tablet PC running on the software by the end of this year.

Source

Its seems everyone is shifting from the desktop/laptop environments to mobile computing. How many does that make?

 

[Foxi4]

...who the hell is Alibaba and why should anyone care? Seriously, first time I've heard of this company.

 

[Pong20302000]

...who the hell is Alibaba and why should anyone care? Seriously, first time I've heard of this company.

on UK TV all the time

basically a place to get anything for a business
like a HUGE warehouse where smaller companies that say "make food cartons" a business can contact um easy though it and say "i wants 10million"

 

[doyama]

You have to consider a few things

It's from China, who have been caught stealing the Cisco OS, claimed Freescale and Motorola chips were 'inventions' by sanding off their logos, and where Baidu basically just copies google's search results into their website (when google 'opened' their china searches Baidu got slammed because they were just copying google and had no idea how to actually filter results because of it)

Note also Alibaba is a B2B warehousing company. They aren't a software technology company. Which then raises the question, where did this sudden 'expertise' in designing a smartphone OS come from?

Thus one has to wonder what this OS is 'based' off of. The odds of it being an original Chinese product are ZERO percent. I'd assume it's probably a rip of Google Chrome or Android.

 

[cwstjdenobs]

Thus one has to wonder what this OS is 'based' off of. The odds of it being an original Chinese product are ZERO percent. I'd assume it's probably a rip of Google Chrome or Android.

Well you can't really say a rip off of FOSS software if the parts they copy are still open. A fork maybe? There's plenty of other OS's about too, just because everyone loves Android now doesn't mean everyone has forgot about them.

What I'd be worried about would be the monitoring tech they would have to put in there being a Chinese company making something targeted at the Chinese domestic market.

 

[jalaneme]

i bet ashens would love to review this "high end" phone, should be interesting, china clones EVERYTHING including food, i'm not joking.

 

[eggsample]

More competition on the market makes dev teams and hw designers are working harder.
I'm using Vibrant and if other phones pretend to bew awesome then no problem for me.

 

[Foxi4]

More competition on the market makes dev teams and hw designers are working harder.
I'm using Vibrant and if other phones pretend to bew awesome then no problem for me.

More competition also means less compatibility, and compatibility is what you should be aiming at when choosing a mobile platform.

 

[SamAsh07]

Alyun OS, now why does that word "Alyun" sound familiar in Arabic

 

[shamiko_]

More competition on the market makes dev teams and hw designers are working harder.
I'm using Vibrant and if other phones pretend to bew awesome then no problem for me.

More competition also means less compatibility, and compatibility is what you should be aiming at when choosing a mobile platform.

compatibility for what?

 

[Nimbus]

My prediction, albiet often wrong prediction

• Alibaba rips off Android, or some FOSS OS.
• Alibaba takes out all GPL references, breaking the GPL license in several parts of the OS
• Someone finds this all out
• FSF and relevant parties are informed
• C&D letters are sent to Alibaba, as well as GPL violation letters
• Alibaba refuses to comply
• FSF and relevant parties pursue legal action
• FSF and relevant parties win, Alibaba's OS is forced to cease to exist
• ?????
• Profit and hilarity ensues

Again, I am likely to be completely wrong, which is why you shouldn't use me as a end-all to crystal balls. Of course can anyone count the number of times a company has violated a FOSS license? I certainly cant recall for sure...too many really.

Not saying they wont "not" comply either, they might.

Still want to see Mozilla's more than anything though.

 

[ferofax]

heh. wants all of what the internet has to offer.

except their internet pretty much offers PG13 stuff. anything else is either filtered, censored, or barred entirely.

 

[ianrulz1]

youve all missed the most important part of this! his name is mr wang...

 

[cwstjdenobs]

youve all missed the most important part of this! his name is mr wang...

There's an awful lot of Wangs in China. Way too many TBH.

 

[Gh0sti]

never heard of this i wonder if it will be good

 

[Thesolcity]

Its another cloud-based OS.

No thanks.