AliYun president Wang Jian takes questions at Alibaba HQ
At a media event at Alibaba’s huge new campus in eastern China, Dr Wang Jian, the “chief architect” of the company’s AliYun OS – which launched back in July – confirmed an upcoming software update that’ll bring English and Traditional Chinese character support to the self-developed mobile platform.
In addition, he set a time-frame for the promised AliYun tablet, saying an iPad rival will appear “in two month’s time.”
The English localization will come “by this month.” But it doesn’t herald an international launch, with Alibaba’s cloud division president stressing there’s “no plan right now” to take its Linux-based software OS beyond China.
At the moment, there’s one model carrying AliYun – from a small Chinese brand named TianYu. AliYun is being coy about hardware partners – for both mobile and tablet – saying that they’re “discussing with at least three global [hardware] vendors” about future variants. No OEM is being named for the confirmed tablet.
An enthusiastic Wang Jian (pictured top) – a former senior engineer at Microsoft Asia – explained his division’s philosophy behind the AliYun mobile OS:
You cannot separate ‘cloud’ from ‘mobile’ … One cannot succeed without the other. The mobile internet right now is just a structure. We now think we want to make the internet mobilized.
The internet mobilized. And, that, in his concept, necessitated the shift to cloud-powered web apps on his new platform. The AliYun phone has been on sale for a whole month so far, but Alibaba is being coy with sales figures, insisting that they’re only concerned with user feedback at this early stage of development.
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
