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Topic: Mobile OS

Alibaba to spin off mobile OS team

Summary: Chinese Internet giant spinning off its mobile operating system (OS) team from its cloud computing division and will be investing US$200 million in the development of Aliyun.

Liau Yun Qing

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Chinese Internet giant Alibaba will be investing US$200 million in its Aliyun OS mobile operating system (OS) team which will be spun off from the company's cloud computing division.

A report Friday on Xinhua cited an internal memo by Jack Ma which said Aliyun OS will be spun off from Aliyun.com, the company's cloud computing unit, into a separate entity which will directly report to the Alibaba Group.

The memo added that Alibaba Group will be investing US$200 million in Aliyun OS to strengthen its talent, technology and infrastructure.

Before the spin off, Aliyun.com was responsible for both cloud computing and mobile OS businesses. After the spin off, Aliyun.com will solely focus on cloud computing, the report said.

Ma also noted that Alibaba Group's chief data officer Jonathan Lu will act as president while the group's chief technology officer, Wang Jian, will be the chairman and CTO of the new unit.

Alibaba recently had a spat with Google over Aliyun OS which the U.S. company said was illegally using Android runtime, framework and tools. Last week, Acer was reportedly prevented by Google from launching an Aliyun handset for the Chinese market.

Topics: Mobile OS, China

About

The only journalist in the team without a Western name, Yun Qing hails from the mountainy Malaysian state, Sabah. She currently covers the hardware and networking beats, as well as everything else that falls into her lap, at ZDNet Asia. Her RSS feed includes tech news sites and most of the Cheezburger network. She is also a cheapskate masquerading as a group-buying addict.

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  • Doing it our way

    I'm waiting for the announcement that Acer has formed a new subsidiary, or bought some new subsidiary, that will address "emerging markets." After Google stepped on Acer's tail for using Aliyun in a product aimed at the Chinese market, I did not expect to hear that Acer had agreed to forego sales in China. Instead I expected something like this, in which Alibaba increases its investment in Aliyun, another announcement from Baidu that it is stepping up efforts on Baidu Cloud, plus a couple of announcements from Asus, Acer, and the gang that they are creating separate companies to lead their efforts in the Chinese market.

    Google wishes to make Android the leading OS in China. It is not to be. If they can't read the tea leaves, I can: the Peoples Republic will have its own Android fork, thankyewverymuch.
    Robert Hahn
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