Alibaba looking to acquire JiaYu


Alibaba have been taking steps to enter the Chinese phone market with its own phones and OS for some time, rumours now claim the E-commerce giant is planning to buy a Chinese phone manufacturer and it could be JiaYu!

Alibaba are the E-commerce giants which own the Alibaba sourcing platform and Chinese answer to E-bay, Taobao. The company have also shown interest in China’s growing phone market too and have launched a number of own branded phones along with teaming up with Taiwanese phone maker Acer.

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Alibaba phones all run a custom version of Android named Aliyun which features the companies own apps and has access to Alibaba’s cloud network.

While there have been a number of attempts, Aliyun Alibaba Android phones haven’t really taken off here in China, so another approach is being contemplated, the acquisition of a Chinese smartphone maker!

Although unconfirmed by the company, sources are claiming that Alibaba could be eyeing up Chinese phone maker JiaYu. JiaYu shot to fame last year with the launch of the JiaYu G3, a dual-core HD phone with a very low price tag, the next generation G4 is expected next month with quad-core CPU, 2GB RAM and 13 mega-pixel camera.

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10 Comments

  1. XrainX
    April 9, 2013

    If Alibaba really really want to make a smartphone it can launch it in 7 days, not 7 months like JiaYu.
    4 days to build the factory, 2 days to make the phone and 1 day to sell 1 million units.
    So simple when you have a lot of money! 😉

  2. Brian from Manchester
    April 10, 2013

    Is this not a good thing…gives finacial stabilty and stronger distribution?

    Also note that Jiayuofficial now has g4 for presell with new prices $230 for the basic 1850mAh $240 for the basic with 3000mAh and $276 for the advanced with 3000mAh battery. Lead time quoted for the advanced but not the basic end of April (but that could be just more over optimistic marketting bullshit).

    • RobertNL
      April 10, 2013

      No its not a good thing, it will be a modded version of Android that is bundled and relaying on lots of Alibaba apps that we can not use. Something says me that it will be quite hard to turn it in to a version that is good to use for us.

      See it like what Amazon did with there Kindle fire (etc) but then for China. But then w/o developers that make ports for non-Asian people.

      • Brian from Manchester
        April 10, 2013

        Not a good thought…better get one before Alibaba buys the companyand spoils the phone

      • TerrorSpawn
        April 10, 2013

        It might be a buy out 😉 so that would be good for Jiayu!
        Why? Well that is simple, Alibaba takes over all stocks and Jiayu keeps on producing phones and have more financial stabilty to try out new innovative ways to create Phones. Which can lead to a higher quality!

        • anony
          April 10, 2013

          And how would alibaba which interest lay in their custom OS and hoping to be the next google benefit from that strategy?

  3. Visitor
    April 10, 2013

    So the G4 Premium is coming next month?
    Could you maybe make a list with available release dates of MTK6589 phones (and which ones are still TBA) and possibly keep it updated?
    I find it pretty hard to find these things and your site is like my only point of reference…

    • Brian from Manchester
      April 10, 2013

      Would you actually believe any of the dates…

      • Visitor
        April 10, 2013

        I think a list of what’s out and what’s coming soon wouldn’t be bad…
        All I have to rely on right now are the dates listed by shops but they sometimes differ and there isn’t any overview whatsoever

  4. adit
    April 10, 2013

    This will kill Jiayu as an option for us, outside China. If does not come with standard Android is of no use. If Alibaba buys it will use for sure Alyiun, this is the whole idea. It may sell in China however. There may be custom ROMs of course but also Alibaba may add locks (locked boot loader as Amazon does. I would not buy any phone which can not be rooted and which can not run standard Android and Google apps. To bad Jiayu S1 looked promising. Good thing is that every day another Chinese company comes from nowhere with a new phone so there is choice. Hope they can stay competitive in price also, if the phone come close to brand names (which have much more support at least in the west, plus support local 3G and LTE bands) the phones loose their advantages.