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Alibaba forms auto, ‘smart living’ business units
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China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, the world’s biggest e-commerce company, has formed an automotive unit and a ‘smart living’ division in the past week, as it ramps up its cloud computing, hardware and big data operations.
Alibaba, like many rival Chinese tech firms, is racing to introduce Internet and computing capabilities to various kinds of everyday products, ranging from televisions and home appliances to cars.
This has the US$214-billion company pitched against rivals like social networking and online entertainment giant Tencent Holdings Inc, search leader Baidu Inc, e-commerce competitor JD.com Inc and hotshot smartphone maker Xiaomi Inc.
In this packed field, China’s online shopping titan is banking on its big data analysis and cloud computing abilities to provide an edge, as it looks to repeat the successes it has seen in overall e-commerce with more specialized categories.
The automotive business unit includes car marketing services built around Alibaba’s big data analysis, online retail site Tmall’s car sales section and providing loans to help people buy vehicles.
Alibaba’s new ‘smart living’ division is comprised of Tmall’s electrical appliances online shopping category, some cloud computing operations and online customer-to-customer marketplace Taobao’s crowd funding platform, said the firm. This platform allows smaller businesses to raise capital from a large group of investors and promote and sell their goods.
Almost 50 car brands and 10,000 dealerships have partnered with Alibaba in China, the company said.
Separately, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said that it had struck a partnership with Shanghai General Motors to offer online sales and financing for GM cars.
Currently, Shanghai GM’s Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet brands are available for sale on Alibaba’s TMall.com website, and the two companies said they would collaborate by using Alibaba’s big data analysis to serve ads to prospective car buyers, offer loans and provide after-market services.
Last month, Chinese auto maker SAIC Motor Corp Ltd said it would join forces with the e-commerce company to invest 1 billion yuan (US$161.08 million) in a fund to develop Internet-connected cars. The joint venture aims to launch its first model in 2016, according to a joint statement. Partnership would include developing new technologies and services using cloud computing.
The Internet is expected to improve the way that drivers interact with their vehicles as well as the whole transportation infrastructure, according to Wang Jian, Alibaba’s chief technology officer.
The joint venture’s first Internet-connected car is likely to be one that combines e-commerce features and offers easier access to services such as online navigation under a unified platform, an industry watcher who keeps a close eye on Internet car projects told Shanghai Daily earlier.
SAIC has its own telematics system called inkaNet, providing online navigation and information/entertainment services as well as long-distance diagnosis of car problems.
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