Alibaba, Tencent Join Mobile OS Bandwagon 阿里巴巴和腾讯进军移动操作系统领域

By newsdoug on July 8, 2011

The development of proprietary mobile operating systems (OS) seems to have suddenly become flavor of the day for China’s new media companies, with industry leaders Alibaba Group and Tencent (HKEx: 700) both reportedly working on their new product offerings to tap a future mobile Internet market expected to eventually overtake traditional desk-bound Web surfing. (English article) Tencent, Alibaba join mobile OS race Regular readers of this blog will recall that Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is also reportedly developing its own mobile OS (previous post), and China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU) launched its own such product, called Wo, earlier this year (previous post). All these initiatives vary in what they are doing, with most appearing to build new systems off existing platforms like Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) industry-leading Android. But one thing these initiatives all have in common is that they’re launching into an incredibly competitive market already dominated by Google, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Nokia (Helsinki: NOK1V) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), and the chances for success for any are just about zero. After all, if you’re a mobile handset maker, do you load your smartphones with Android or the Windows mobile system, which both have strong support and track records from their developers, or do you choose to work with Baidu or Unicom? The answer should be obvious, and these major Chinese Web firms — which have way too much cash to spend on silly initiatives like this — would be better served to spend their money elsewhere.

Bottom line: New mobile OS initiatives by Alibaba and Tencent are destined to fail in the face of stiff global competition, following in the footsteps of similar initiatives by Baidu and Unicom.

开发专属的移动操作系统似乎在一夜之间受到了中国新媒体企业的青睐。有报导称，业界领头羊阿里巴巴和腾讯<0700.HK>正致力於开发其最新手机操作系统，以挖掘未来的移动互联网市场，该市场料将逐步超越传统的固定上网模式。经常看我博客的读者或许还记得，有报导称百度<BIDU.O>也在开发一款专属的移动操作系统，而中国联通<0762.HK><CHU.N>在今年早些时候已经推出其名为“沃”的移动操作系统。所有这些想法彼此都各不相同，多数似乎都想创造一种脱离像谷歌<GOOG.O>安卓系统等现有平台的新系统，但共同之处却是，他们正在向一个已然被谷歌、苹果<AAPL.O>、诺基亚<NOK1V. HE>、微软<MSFT.O>所主导的竞争异常激烈的市场发起了挑战，对任何企业而言，这种成功的机率基本为零。毕竟，如果你是移动手机制造商，你是为你的智能手机搭载认可度很高的安卓系统、Windows系统，还是选择与百度或联通合作？答案显而易见，所以我奉劝中国这些主要的互联网企业应该把他们大把的钱用在刀刃上。

一句话：面对激烈的全球竞争，阿里巴巴和腾讯开发新的移动操作系统的举动注定不会成功。

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