Alibaba Developing Mobile OS to Rival Android & iOS

Tweet

As if the current slew of mobile operating systems isn’t enough, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has launched its very own Aliyun OS for mobile devices.

Aliyun OS is a Linux derivative, similar to Android. And as such, Alibaba says the smartphone and tablet OS can also run Android applications. However, Aliyun OS can also run web apps based on HTML5 and JavaScript, and users don’t even have to be online. This gives developers the flexibility to create and deploy applications for tablets and smartphones running the operating system.

Aliyun OS is already available on the soon-to-be-released K-Touch Cloud Smartphone from ODM Tianyu. The smartphone will come with an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor running at 1 GHz and a 3.8-inch capacitive touchscreen (other specs are yet to be announced). The phone will cost 2,680 Yuan or about $416 when it’s released to the Chinese market. With about a billion mobile phone users — with 280 million using smartphones — the Chinese market isn’t a small one, mind you. And Alibaba wants to take advantage of this by featuring their e-commerce tools on the Aliyun OS smartphones. Tablets are also in the works.

Will an alternative OS be able to compete with already-established smartphone operating systems, such as iOS and Android? Maybe for Alibaba, and maybe for China — they’re the eBay and Amazon this side of the globe, after all.