Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group has revived its homegrown mobile phone operating system, seven months after Google blocked the China debut of an Acer smartphone featuring Alibaba’s software. Alibaba's mobile business unit will work with device manufacturers, telecom carriers, and software developers in the creation of an ecosystem revolving around the Alibaba OS.
The OS has also been rebranded to Alibaba Mobile Operating System (Amos), from the original name of Aliyun (Ali Cloud) OS. The company also announced that five additional handset makers were launching phones running the Alibaba software, although none are major players: Konka, Zopo, Amoi, G'Five, and Little Pepper. Alibaba also created a new sales channel on its online shopping site Taobao.com dedicated to Amos phones.
Alibaba said it will subsidise handset makers by paying them an ongoing fee of CNY 1 a month for every Amos-equipped phone they sell, providing the phone’s owner remains an active user of the software. Furthermore, the company will encourage software developers to build cloud-based Amos applications through a CNY 1-billion programme that will funnel funds to apps makers through revenue sharing and other incentives or rewards.
The company is also working with smartphone makers and telecom operators so that consumers who sign up for service plans can obtain smartphones without paying deposits or down payments. Creditworthiness will be determined through a system similar to the one used by Alibaba subsidiary AliFinance, which uses shopping and payment records from Alibaba's retail websites.
Even though Alibaba charges no software licensing fee, the company has been unable to attract major manufacturers to adopt the OS since its debut in July 2011. Prior to this announcement, only appliance manufacturer Haier and phonemaker Beijing Tianyu have made Amos phones. The company's biggest setback came last September, when the launch of an Acer smartphone running the company's software was cancelled under pressure from Google.
Alibaba's move comes shortly after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published a white paper that concluded China’s smartphone industry is "too dependent on Android." The Ministry said China has the ability to create its own mobile operating system.
