Alibaba eyes smartphone market with $590m investment in Meizu
Chinese online retailer Alibaba is to acquire a minority stake in budget smartphone manufacturer Meizu as it seeks to extend its influence to mobile hardware.
Alibaba has been developing its own mobile operating system, YunOS, in a bid to capitalise on the mobile boom which it launched last year in partnership with Meizu. Thus far it has failed to set the heather alight however and hasn’t been able to dislodge Google’s Android platform.
Commenting on the move Alibaba’s chief technology officer Jian Wang said: “The investment in Meizu represents a significant expansion of the Alibaba Group ecosystem and an important step in our overall mobile strategy as we strive to bring users a wider array of mobile offerings and experiences.”
Amazon has made similar forays into the smartphone sphere with its own Fire Phone although this too has failed to make any inroads into a highly competitive market.