China Mobile teams up to retool business

CHINA Mobile is teaming up with several partners to explore prospects in cloud, VR and smart driving sectors as the world’s biggest telecommunication carrier transforms its business and diversify its revenue.

The telco said yesterday its investment in Shanghai-based cloud service provider Ucloud will enable the two companies to cooperate on an eco-system, technology and products and share resources. Ucloud offers public cloud service for over 80,000 enterprises.

Both sides didn’t provide an investment figure but market observers expected it to be above the 900 million yuan (US$148 million) Ucloud received in its previous round of investment in March.

The two partners will push the “CBA strategy,” referring to cloud, big data and artificial intelligence, Ji Xinhua, Ucloud’s CEO, said during the ongoing Mobile World Congress Shanghai event.

China Mobile will also cooperate with Taiwan’s HTC smartphone vendor to develop 5G and virtual reality. The telco will partner HTC to make VR more accessible nationwide and boost mass VR adoption in the market

A recent system update allows users to stream phone content from Android phones to HTC VR devices.

China Mobile also said it will work with Huawei and SAIC on smart driving using 5G and V2X (vehicles to various devices) connection.