3 years on, Alibaba’s not giving up on its mobile OS

The newest version of Alibaba’s YunOS.

Alibaba debuted its mobile OS in 2011, but it never seemed to take off. A major bust-up with Google in 2012 effectively excluded Alibaba’s mobile OS from running on hardware made by the search giant’s major Android parters, so that it was only running on phones made by brands nobody’s ever heard of. That’s when the OS seemed to be dead.

But now Alibaba is taking a different course with the OS – now called YunOS; “yun” means cloud in Chinese – by effectively making it into an Android ROM that can be quite easily put onto existing phones. Yesterday Alibaba revealed that YunOS will shortly become available on a variant of the Meizu MX4 (pictured below), an attractive large-screen phone that goes head-to-head with the Xiaomi Mi4. We reviewed the regular version of the Meizu MX4 last month.

The YunOS variant of the Meizu MX4 will run Alibaba’s OS overlaid with Meizu’s Android skin (which is called Flyme). In terms of appearances, it’s barely distinguishable from the normal version of the MX4. It runs YunOS 3.0, the latest version that was unveiled earlier this month. The new MX4 will cost RMB 1,799 (US$295).

So now Alibaba’s mobile OS finally has a decent handset from a recognizable brand, but that still doesn’t make it an easy proposition. Since 2011, Xiaomi has gone from zero to tens of millions of sales per year, and any alternatives are a hard sell – even when it comes from China’s top ecommerce company.

The main selling point in YunOS seems to be its Cloud Card feature that aims to make it easier for people to buy things. Amazon’s critically-panned Fire phone isn’t doing too well in that regard. Another feature in YunOS is the “deep search” within the content of some apps. This comes from Alibaba’s investment in Quixey, a US-based search engine that’s trying to shake up how mobile content is searched for in the era of apps.

See: Xiaomi Mi4 is a bombshell in the $300 smartphone war – REVIEW