The e-commerce giant Alibaba plans to have a mobile operating system for smartphones and tablets that will target Chinese consumers, according to a report from the Financial Times.
Alibaba will have a smartphone with its OS very soon and a tablet will land by the end of the year. With iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and webOS, you may be wondering why the world needs another smartphone platform but you may be forgetting just how big the Chinese mobile market is. The country’s top carrier has more subscribers than there are people in the United States and Japan, so there’s definitely an opportunity.
While the iPhone is doing well in China, there are still issues about data costs per month. Android is also doing well, it’s not the same Android you and I know well, as it’s a custom version which lets the carriers have its own app stores as the primary way to deliver apps.
The strength of the Chinese market has also helped ZTE rocket from relative obscurity to being one of the world’s largest handset maker, so we’ll be keep an eye on the Alibaba smartphone OS.
[Via Financial Times]