Those mobile phone manufacturers that have been favored by Alibaba

Nowadays, in the technology industry, you have to be associated with BAT ( Baidu , Tencent , Alibaba ) to show your superiority. On October 21, Meizu and Alibaba reached a major cooperation: Meizu launched Flyme4 based on Alibaba Cloud YunOS 3.0. With this system, Meizu MX4 flagship phone plans to sell 100,000 units on Tmall platform during "Double 11".

With the news of this strategic cooperation revealed, Alibaba's expansion in the mobile phone field has undoubtedly attracted more attention from the industry. On the day before, on October 20, Alibaba released a new operating system "YunOS 3.0" and released the first smartphone equipped with Alibaba Cloud OS3.0 - the Philips I966 Aurora smartphone.

That's right, the first phone equipped with Alibaba Cloud OS 3.0 was not the Meizu MX4, but the Philips I966, which was one day earlier than the Meizu phone with Alibaba Cloud OS. "Kerosene" doesn't need to rush to express anger, after all, Alibaba has been fickle for a long time. Searching for Cloud OS phones on Zhongguancun Online, the search results show that there are 44 models of more than 20 brands pre-loaded with Alibaba Cloud OS, and the Meizu MX4 is just the new favorite.

Meizu: Sticking to the back entrance, painful and happy

Favored time: October 2014

Although the initial hype has attracted much attention, the truth is that Alibaba has become an international Internet giant after its IPO in the United States, while Meizu is only a second- or third-tier smartphone brand in China. The gap between the two is very large, so it is better to say that Meizu is clinging to Alibaba rather than a strategic cooperation between the two.

Ali did not choose Meizu for RMB. Ali was attracted by Meizu's resource platform, which can embed many application products in the mobile phone. Meizu mobile phone installed YunOS system as Ali wished, but Huang Zhang and Meizu also retained its Flyme. The two sides finally found an interesting compromise - the Internet entrance provided by Meizu mobile phone was shared by the two parties. Ali provided the bottom layer of YunOS, and there was a screen application on the UI that provided the entrance to Ali. Meizu retained Flyme, and Meizu kept the APP entrances on other screens for itself. It is conceivable that Meizu's married life is painful and happy. On the one hand, she has to please Ali, and on the other hand, she has to guard against Ali.

Time to be banished to the cold palace: Maybe tomorrow?

Qingcheng: Deeply explore the customized market and develop outdoor sports mobile phones

Favored time: July 2013

Since its inception, Qingcheng Mobile Phone has taken an innovative path - adopting a C2B business model to let consumers decide how the mobile phone is presented. Alibaba also took a fancy to Qingcheng's model and jointly released the Qingyun customized mobile phone based on Alibaba Cloud OS in July 2013. In November 2013, as a strategic partner of Qingcheng, many senior executives of Alibaba attended the launch conference of Qingcheng's new product NX and stated that Qingcheng's entire product line supports Alibaba Cloud OS, and MyUI and Cloud OS are perfectly integrated in Qingcheng's smart terminal products. In March 2014, industry insiders revealed that Alibaba intended to invest $100 million in Qingcheng Mobile Phone.

Time of being banished to the cold palace: Unknown

Faced with the passionate love between Alibaba and Meizu, Qingcheng, the "old love", did not compete with the "new love", but quietly worked on its new product, outdoor sports mobile phone. Based on the current situation of serious homogeneity in the mobile phone market, Wang Xun, CEO of Qingcheng Mobile, seized the outdoor market among many market segments, skillfully combined the elements of outdoor, social and emotional communication, and healthy lifestyle, and focused on the sustainable and healthy development of outdoor mobile phones.

In the mobile phone market where price and hardware are severely homogenized, Qingcheng outdoor sports mobile phones provide unique and specialized functions, defining users as outdoor sports enthusiasts to form a loyal user group. This is a blue ocean that seems niche but actually has unlimited potential. Such active "self-reliance" is more promising than competing for favor in the harem.

DOOV: Finding a new love, launching Tudou camera phone

Favored time: August 2013

In mid-August 2013, He Mingshou, chairman of DOOV Mobile, met with Lu Zhaoxi, CEO of Alibaba, in secret, and the two had a long negotiation. In September 2013, DOOV and Alibaba quickly launched the DOOV Xiaoqiao C1 equipped with the Alibaba Cloud system. Relying on DOOV's reputation among women's mobile phones and Tmall's channels, more than 30,000 people made reservations before the official sale. However, a year later, the only DOOV mobile phone equipped with Alibaba Cloud OS in DOOV's Tmall flagship store is still the Xiaoqiao C1.

Time of being banished to the cold palace: August 2014

He Mingshou once said that he only makes mobile phones for women, but this position has changed. In August 2014, the video website Tudou announced a partnership with DOOV to launch the Nike mobile phone DOOV V1, which focuses on photography and audio-visual. Although it has successfully transferred its love to another, how can Tudou compare with Alibaba, who is tall, rich and handsome. The concept of video phones sounds beautiful, but iQiyi has already launched two video phones in cooperation with Huawei and 100+, Xunlei has launched Thunderbird phones in cooperation with 100+, and LeTV is also making mobile phones in a big way, so the prospects are worrying. More importantly, Youku Tudou Group has accepted investment from Alibaba. Who knows if Tudou is a gay?

Tianyu: Launching the e-commerce brand Nibiru, starting a new business

Favored time: July 2011

On July 28, 2011, Alibaba Cloud Computing officially launched the Alibaba Cloud operating system and announced the cooperation with Tianyu to release the first smartphone, Tianyu W700. In April 2012, Tianyu launched several terminals, including the Big Hornet W806 and the Small Hornet W619, which were equipped with the Alibaba Cloud operating system. However, these terminals based on the Alibaba Cloud operating system attracted constant controversy after they were launched. As the first mobile phone manufacturer to carry the Alibaba Cloud system, Tianyu unfortunately became Alibaba's guinea pig. Facing Alibaba, which had no experience in favoring, Tianyu had no pleasure at all.

Time of being banished to the cold palace: August 2012

Since the interface customized for Taobao users is quite different from traditional Android, the system running speed is reduced, and the user experience of Tianyu mobile phones has been criticized. In August 2012, Tianyu announced that it would abandon the Alibaba Cloud system. In January 2014, Tianyu announced the launch of a new e-commerce brand Nibiru, positioning itself as an imaginative mobile phone brand. Although there are many new products that are noteworthy, the brand has been lost in the Lumia, Ascend, and Nubia due to its overly bizarre naming.

Haier: Haier is hard to find in the mobile phone market

Favored time: June 2012

In June 2012, Alibaba Cloud joined hands with Haier to launch the rugged mobile phone Haier W718. This time, Alibaba OS learned from the failure of its cooperation with Tianyu Bumblebee series and made substantial improvements to Alibaba Cloud OS, which is relatively mature. However, the initial results of the integration of mobile phone hardware and software were not ideal.

Time of being banished to the cold palace: July 2012

Although the Alibaba Cloud mobile phone jointly launched by Alibaba Cloud, Tianyu, Haier and other manufacturers is still on sale, it has generally entered a period of silence. In particular, Haier's mobile phone business has not seen any improvement, with monthly sales of less than 100 units and prices dropping from the initial 999 yuan to around 500 yuan. Since then, the two parties have not launched any new cooperative models, and Haier is hard to find on Taobao's cloud mobile phone channel.

Acer: Threatened by Google, Alibaba's attempt to favor it failed

Favor time: None

In fact, Acer has never been favored by Alibaba. On September 12, 2012, Acer and Alibaba originally planned to hold a press conference in Shanghai to officially announce the Acer A800 mobile phone equipped with Alibaba Cloud OS. It can be seen that both parties attach great importance to this cooperation, and Acer specially invited a large number of media to attend. Unexpectedly, just one hour before the opening, the media were notified that the press conference was temporarily cancelled. Alibaba Cloud was the first to jump out and said that the reason why Acer canceled the release of the A800 mobile phone based on Alibaba Cloud operating system was due to pressure from Google. If Acer insisted on releasing it, Google would cancel Acer's Android authorization.

Since Alibaba Cloud OS made a lot of underlying modifications to the Android native system in terms of compatibility, Google used a "threatening" approach to stop the Acer A800 press conference, which almost caused the cooperation between Acer and Alibaba Cloud on Alibaba Cloud OS to fall through. Alibaba was busy arguing with Android and did not prove that Alibaba Cloud OS was completely independently developed, and argued for the opportunity for Acer A800 to be unveiled.

In addition to the Acer A800 mistake, Alibaba has also cooperated with other manufacturers including AUX, Blue Sky, Little Bee, Xiwei, Prida, Ochi, Interchi, Zhuopu, Amoi, Givvy, Konka, Little La Jiao, and Big Coke, most of which are not well known to the public.

Judging from the feedback from some partners, their cooperation with Alibaba is more of an attempt to explore the experience of e-commerce channels rather than becoming Alibaba's hardware OEM factory. Alibaba has been trying to achieve the long-tail effect through multi-brand and multi-model cooperation, but the shotgun cooperation approach to break through has not made any progress.

From the cooperation experience between Alibaba and many mobile phone manufacturers, we can also see that the cooperation between Alibaba and mobile phone manufacturers is vigorous at the beginning, but it stops after launching one or two new machines equipped with Alibaba Cloud. In the Arabic novel "One Thousand and One Nights", Alibaba was able to overcome the danger and defeat the robbers with the help of the maid Morgiana. Although Meizu's industrial design and market reputation are obvious to all, can Meizu, which is in pain and happiness, become Alibaba's maid with both wisdom and appearance?

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.