Analysis of the relationship between Alibaba Cloud OS and more than 30 partner manufacturers

On October 21, after the Meizu-Ali strategic conference, Alibaba CTO Wang Jian talked about Yun OS and said: As of October 2014, there are more than 30 mobile phone brands using Yun OS, with more than 10 million end users. So the question is, who are these more than 30 partners? What is their relationship with Alibaba? What impact will the cooperation between Alibaba and Meizu have on them? Chen Shuo will analyze it for you.

Yun OS has more than 30 partners, more than 40, and many of them are large manufacturers.

From the information about the cooperative manufacturers that Alibaba has announced to the public, we can only know about 10 of them. However, according to the network access data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of October 15 this year, there are 42 mobile phone manufacturers and 76 mobile phones using Yun OS. Including the recent cooperation with Meizu MX4 and Philips I966, there should be 43 partners, launching 78 mobile phones. Among them, more than 80% of the mobile phone manufacturers are in Shenzhen, and the average sales volume of each mobile phone is more than 100,000 units.

Why did Alibaba only list more than 30 companies? I speculate that some of the partner manufacturers passed the network access test of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, but failed in the process of seeking operator customization, and the mobile phones were not put on the market and were not counted by Alibaba.

1. There is no shortage of large manufacturers, and further cooperation is possible in the future

In March this year, Coolpad launched a YunOS-based mobile phone, Coolpad 8079_T00, which was not launched on the market or was quietly sold through the operator channels. Coolpad is several times larger than Meizu and ranks top 5 in the domestic market. It can be judged that YunOS has been looking for cooperation with large manufacturers since this year, and the possibility of further cooperation with large manufacturers such as Coolpad in the future is not ruled out.

2. Tianyu made the greatest contribution and was the first to give up cooperation

It is no exaggeration to say that Tianyu has made great contributions, because Tianyu is the earliest user of YunOS, the promoter of continuous optimization, and the contributor to most of the sales.

Tianyu is the first partner of YunOS. In 2011 and 2012, it launched four products in two consecutive years, namely Tianyu W700, W800, Small Hornet and Large Hornet. In May 2012, Alibaba announced that the sales of mobile phones (mainly the first two models) exceeded 1 million units. In August 2012, Tianyu Chairman Rong Xiuli said in an interview that the cumulative sales of Large Hornet and Small Hornet reached 3 million units. Compared with the more than 10 million terminal users of Yun OS, Tianyu mobile phone sales accounted for 30%-40%.

There were rumors in the industry that Alibaba had invested in Tianyu, but the deal ended unhappily. The loss of Tianyu is a huge loss for YunOS.

3. Haier and Acer are both members of OHA, but they stopped cooperating for different reasons

In 2012, Acer prepared two Alibaba Cloud phones, but Google stopped them before the launch, saying that Acer had to abide by the commitment of OHA (Open Handset Alliance with Google at its core) members to support the unified Android platform (Google Android) and not release incompatible Android (YunOS). The relationship between YunOS and Android will not be explained here.

Among the mainland mobile phone manufacturers, Haier ranks in the top five in OHA (the other four are ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, and OPPO), but Haier has not been stopped by Google. It can be seen that when Alibaba is trying to attract mobile phone manufacturers, the OHA factor is a big hidden danger, but it is not completely impossible. When talking about OHA, Meizu's Li Nan also said that although Meizu is not a member of OHA, there are risks in this regard in future international expansion, but he believes that when this step really comes, the situation will change.

Haier only launched one YunOS phone, which was promoted with great fanfare, but the sales effect was not ideal. Three months later, Haier launched a smartphone that can interact with smart TVs and computers. Except for this phone, the rest used the Android system. There was no further cooperation after that.

4. What pain points does YunOS address in response to the demands of small manufacturers?

Only when both parties find their interests will they hit it off.

From 2011 to 2012, Yun OS only provided system platforms, and its partners were only Tianyu, Haier, and Acer, which were basically second-tier domestic manufacturers with a certain reputation. However, the cooperation between the three companies ended in failure.

Yun OS has adopted an ecological strategy since 2013. The so-called ecological strategy refers to Alibaba's ability in the Internet, e-commerce and cloud computing to unite excellent design companies, hardware manufacturers, communication operators and developers in the market to complement each other's resources and build a healthy ecological system to help all links in the industry chain, including terminal mobile phone manufacturers, to gain market space and competitive advantages.

This ecosystem has what small manufacturers need most. First, the difficulty of secondary development of the operating system is reduced, which can save costs. Second, Taobao and Tmall platforms have become important channels for mobile phone sales, promoting brand exposure and sales. Third, Alibaba has invested 1 billion yuan to support application developers and manufacturers, especially the sales sharing mechanism with manufacturers, which can bring real profits.

5. Why do some excellent friends leave?

Some partners in the ecosystem left after just one cooperation, such as Xiao La Jiao, Konka, DOOV, and Amoi. Others cooperated more frequently, such as Zhuopu, which launched 7 mobile phones, Oukit, which launched 5, Interqi, which launched 5, Givvy, which launched 4, Bird, which launched 3, and Philips, which launched 3. Why do some partners leave? The reasons are as follows.

First, the stability and maturity of YunOS still need to be improved. I asked several operators about the test status of Alibaba Cloud Phone. YunOS 3.0 had more test rounds before, and the integration of software and hardware needs to be improved. Some Zhuopu mobile phone users also said, "Ali's system has not been updated for several months, and many new applications cannot be installed." In addition, with the increase in the number of partners, Alibaba's technical support has also decreased.

Second, it is true that YunOS can reduce the cost of secondary development of the operating system, but the cost of learning and adapting to changing platforms is not low either.

Third, Alibaba's e-commerce platform does not give all small manufacturers exposure opportunities. Of course, this may be because the products of small manufacturers themselves are not up to standard. Some small manufacturers also did not want to use Alibaba's channel platform because there are not many of their user groups on it.

Fourth, YunOS is relatively advanced in concept, and many mobile phone users do not need such "high-end" things. Especially when the network conditions are poor, cloud services have no advantages. And users of small manufacturers perform very average in terms of network and ARPU.

After Yun OS cooperates with Meizu, what impact will it have on you and what will be your fate?

The real mobile operating systems in China include China Mobile OMS, China Unicom Wo OS, and the popular COS, but none of them have been successful. Alibaba has gone the furthest. Judging from the statements made by officials from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology at the YunOS launch conference and YunOS's inclusion in the government procurement catalog, Alibaba will also receive strong support from the state. YunOS is about to usher in rapid development.

Alibaba's ambition is to build a Chinese Android. In Alibaba's cloud strategy, a large number of mobile life applications have been deployed, and hardware products such as smartphones have the important mission of making Alibaba's mobile e-commerce a reality. Therefore, in future strategies, small manufacturers are still an important force, but they must abide by Alibaba's rules. It can be judged that after operators reduce fees, Alibaba will become an important force in customized mobile phones, and its voice in the industry chain will gradually increase. In this regard, Alibaba and operators will inevitably have a battle.

In the process of competing for the right to speak in the industry chain, there are several steps that must be taken. For example, the product layout should include high, medium and low-end, and the newly launched Philips mobile phone should be priced above 3,000 yuan to create a high-end image. For example, mobile phone manufacturers should take into account both large and small, and have layouts in Internet channels, social channels, and operator channels. Here, the cooperation with Meizu is an important step, which will play a good role in promoting the brand awareness of YunOS. For example, the sales volume of 10 million is far from the sales volume of hundreds of millions under the operator system.

If we start from the perspective of continuing to cultivate small and medium-sized manufacturers, Alibaba may strengthen these things, which is also my suggestion.

1. Technical support. Small manufacturers often lack technical strength, which will increase the development cycle. Strengthening communication and exchanges with small manufacturers and providing more support and services will win the hearts of small manufacturers.

2. Sales channels. With the cooperation with slightly larger mobile phone manufacturers, small and medium-sized manufacturers will pay less attention to e-commerce platforms, and it is only a matter of time before they explore T4-T6 channels. Through the B2B approach, strengthening the construction of small and medium-sized channel systems and creating a more complete ecosystem is not only a help for mobile phone manufacturers, but also a support. Only in this way will the younger brothers follow the big brothers.

3. Supply chain finance. For small manufacturers, if inventory turnover is not well controlled and the capital chain is broken, they will be in danger of life and death. Supply chain finance is what they urgently need.

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.