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July 23, 2013 02:44 pm GMT

Alibaba Pursues New Smart TV OS To Grow Its E-Commerce Play

Image1 for post Alibaba Turns 10 - Aims To Create 100 Million Jobs, Employ 10 Million PeopleChinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has joined the smart TV race, unveiling a smart TV OS and set-top box today. It hopes to create its own ecosystem of TV-related assets that will allow it to join in the digital content space, letting it provide a platform for users to share content with mobile phones and other devices. The new OS will also allow users to shop and pay bills via their TVs. This is a big potential catalyst for more growth for the company; if users warm to the OS, it should pull more over to Alibaba’s e-commerce assets, which include Juhuasuan, Taobao and Tmall. They’ll also pay via Alipay, Alibaba’s payment gateway. Alibaba has been aggressively pursuing other avenues of growth for its business, and in particular finding ways to make Alipay more relevant to the growing e-commerce market in China. In January, it unveiled a mobile app for Alipay, and in April showed off a way for Beijingers to pay with their phones at vending machines using sound waves. The Chinese e-commerce market hit $120 billion in 2012, and was driven significantly by mobile users, according to theChina Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). Alibaba’s new set-top box will be called Wasu Rainbow, built by fellow Chinese company, Wasu Media Holding, which operates digital TV and IPTV networks in the country. Wasu Media was one of the first companies to obtain an Internet TV license from the government, and claims to have the largest user base in China with 8 million users. Alibaba said in a statement that other large Chinese manufacturers have agreed to incorporate its OS into their devices. These include Skyworth, Haier, Changhong.Dominant tech companies like Samsung and Apple already play in this space, and as prices come down, the fight for audiences is expected to heat up as smart TVs take over living rooms. According to IHS iSuppli, smart TV shipments climbed 27 percent in 2012 to hit 66 million units. And we can expect smart TVs to cross over the halfway mark of global shipments by 2015, said the analyst firm in February. Alibaba’s OS was designed by its AliCloud subsidiary, which developed the Alibaba mobile OS in 2011. Users will be able to use their mobile phones to control the Alibaba TVs, and connect with TVs to stream content to the handsets. The company plans to have an app store for video games, and

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