ALIBABA STILL PLAYING CATCH-UP
Sluggish adoption of YunOS after 6 years sparks debate about software’s future
ALIBABA Group Holding Ltd’s six-year-old excursion into mobile operating systems is faltering in China, casting doubt over the software that bears billionaire-founder Jack Ma’s name and was once touted as key to countering Tencent Holdings Ltd.
China’s largest e-commerce company debuted YunOS in 2011, a system that underpins search, shopping and browsing that its executives said could attain as much as 25 per cent domestic market share by the end of last year — surpassing Apple Inc’s iOS.
Six years on, YunOS’s slice of China software installations stands at just 2.2 per cent while its share of shipments was 10 per cent last year, researchers Canalys and Counterpoint estimate, respectively. Alibaba disputes those numbers.
Alibaba managers had grown increasingly unhappy with its sluggish adoption and had begun an internal debate around the software’s future, said a person familiar with the matter.
Yet the talks reflect the inability of a once-vaunted initiative to forestall Tencent’s dominance in the mobile arena, secured through the utility of WeChat — a universal app that melds messaging, payments, media, shopping and on-demand services.
“Apart from Meizu, none of the other large mobile phone makers are working with them closely,” said Jia Mo, a Shanghai-based analyst at Canalys.
“Alibaba can only attempt to expand its mobile operating system in China. It could run into all sorts of IP issues if it tried to go overseas.”
Meizu Technology Corp is backed by Alibaba. Alibaba folded the YunOS operation into its cloud computing division in February, said the company in an emailed statement.
The firm said it would continue to invest in the software and push its wider adoption among the Internet of Things (IoT) or connected devices, and pointed to recent advances such as a YunOS-enabled car it unveiled last year alongside carmaker SAIC Motor Corp.
“YunOS is an important strategic business under Alibaba Group,” it said. The company “will continue the investment into YunOS and our IoT ecosystem”. Bloomberg