Yun OS review: No wonder Meizu's Huang Zhang bet 10 million

Recently, Yun OS has been the hottest topic in the domestic technology community. This business, which belongs to the Alibaba Group but is on the margins in the eyes of most users, is slowly being straightened out and serving as a fertile ground for the next ideal practice of the Alibaba empire.

On the 20th of this month, Yun OS 3.0 was officially released in Beijing. Although Alibaba did not mention it, people will never forget the difficulties that Yun OS has gone through. Yun OS was intercepted by Google as soon as it was born. Alibaba claimed that Yun OS was independently developed based on Linux, while Google pointed out that Yun OS used the underlying architecture of Android. The Chinese mainland market eventually became a barrier between the two sides, and the abortion of the Yun OS mobile phone planned by Taiwan PC manufacturer Acer was the symbol of the ceasefire.

Since then, Yun OS has begun to focus on domestic small-brand manufacturers and e-commerce businesses. The former includes old-brand copycat phone manufacturers and young mobile phone companies such as Zhuopu and Qingcheng, while the latter is completely centered around Alibaba's own e-commerce business. Alibaba even gave away Yun OS phones to Taobao sellers for free. In general, the previous Yun OS was more like a "village owner" in a remote corner, and did not have the ability to face industry competition head-on.

So far, the number of Yun OS users has exceeded 10 million, which may not sound too bad, but considering that Yun OS has been around for more than three years and is backed by Alibaba, this number is definitely not satisfactory. But whether Alibaba is not paying enough attention to it or Yun OS is not making enough efforts, starting with Yun OS 3.0, Alibaba will release its ambition to make some changes.

Mobile phone, both as the entrance and behind the scenes

Yun OS 3.0 uses a card-style interface design, focusing on a complete mobile Internet service system, including online shopping, payment, group buying, taxi-hailing, etc. Based on this, Yun OS has also vigorously developed the security of software and hardware. This will also be one of the main directions of Yun OS 3.0 in the future. The person in charge of Yun OS said that in the future, Yun OS will open interfaces to enable developers to develop more service scenarios.

It is not difficult to see that Yun OS hopes to distinguish itself from other existing systems by using a design that is completely service-oriented. On the one hand, this is one of the few possible shortcuts in the current competition in the mobile phone industry, and on the other hand, it is backed by the huge resources of the entire Alibaba Group. Ultimately, when users use Yun OS, it seems that they are only entering services, but in fact they are entering Alibaba's ecosystem, which is undoubtedly more vertical and complete than MIUI and Flyme, which still rely on third-party companies to provide services.

In addition to the improvement of the system itself, Yun OS's biggest shortcoming before - hardware - has also been improved this time. In the past, the hardware manufacturers in the Yun OS ecosystem were scattered and weak, and even if they were tied together, they could not stand on their own. Now Alibaba needs to make improvements on this, but at the same time it has not given up on these manufacturers.

At the press conference, Alibaba announced the first batch of hardware partners for Yun OS 3.0 - Water World and Philips. The former is a mobile smart terminal solution design provider based in Shenzhen, and will become the underlying hardware partner of Yun OS, helping Alibaba to provide one-stop services for small manufacturers that do not have design capabilities - just like Google's Android One plan.

Philips brought a benchmark mobile phone product for Yun OS 3.0 - Aurora I966, which you can also think of as Google's "Nexus" project. But Philips alone is not enough, Meizu, which has been fighting with Yun OS for a long time, is the big boss behind the scenes.

Just this afternoon, Alibaba and Meizu jointly held a press conference and launched the Flyme system based on the Yun OS system architecture. At the same time, the Meizu MX4 using this system version was also unveiled. Alibaba chose Meizu because it saw the unique style and strong fan base that Meizu has cultivated in the domestic mobile phone industry for a long time, which will help Yun OS to transform and officially enter the mainstream industry. For the latter, the Alibaba resources behind the series of services provided by Yun OS, as well as the security performance of Yun OS, are what Meizu urgently needs.

Li Nan also admitted that Xiaomi is the only mobile phone company that has formed a closed loop in the chain of "traffic, channels, mobile phones, systems and value-added income", which is an advantage that Meizu has to admit. If Meizu wants to make up for this shortcoming and then obtain such a closed-loop ecosystem, cooperating with Alibaba is the best way.

This means that Yun OS not only has the ambition to compete for the entrance, but also has the determination to be behind the scenes, which means that in the best case, it can copy Android or fight MIUI. But no one dares to make a final decision on how much power it can have.

Other systems: It is easy to occupy a pit, but difficult to form alliances

And Yun OS 3.0 is not just a mobile phone system. At the press conference, Alibaba stated that it will also cross over into areas such as tablet computers, car systems and wearable devices in the future. This is obviously an attempt to catch up with mainstream companies in layout and scope in one step.

However, compared with the possible opportunities in the mobile phone system, the subsequent businesses can almost undoubtedly be classified as pit-taking measures. Note that this does not mean that Alibaba is incapable of doing these tasks, but that the prospects of the business itself are still unclear.

On the one hand, these industries themselves are not yet fully formed. Even giants such as Apple and Google are still in the early stages of enclosure. Alibaba will not make much difference, and Alibaba will not make much difference either.

On the other hand, these businesses are deeply dependent on smartphones as a driving force, and they will rise and fall together with the mobile phone business. Under the premise that Yun OS itself has not made any substantial progress, talking about the bright future of in-vehicle systems and wearable devices may be a bit of a pipe dream, but it is okay to say that it is overestimating one's own capabilities.

However, considering that the Chinese government is promoting the development and construction of its own system, and that government departments such as the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also attended the Yun OS launch conference, we need to add a layer of government background and support to the prospects of Yun OS. However, we have seen such attention and cooperation in other fields and companies before, and everyone knows how effective it is in the end.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.