By Herman Lai, posted Oct 24, 2011 at 11:19 AM, 504 views,

Alibaba Launches YunPad and Second-Gen Aliyun Smartphone [Update]

Today the promised YunPad surprisingly appeared at Aliyun developer conference. Unfortunately, it is only a prototype and it is not working yet. Rather than the alleged tablet showed up in the conference, Alibaba also decided to display its next-gen Aliyun smartphone which has been named as W800.

UPDATE:

W800 Aliyun phone will equip NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor, based on ARM Cortex A9 structure, remained “Yun button” design, display will increase up to 4.3-inch (3.8-inch display on Aliyun first gen phone).

First off, the only thing that we are sure of is YunPad will be a 7-inch Aliyun-based tablet. Despite, Alibaba managed to keep its specs in secret, and also Alibaba’s calculation president disclosed YunPad will probably launch on the Dec 20th.

As with W800, the successor of W700, it is allegedly to have a bigger display in comparison with W700 and it may launches by next month on the 20th. Other than that, it is secret.

Is it already too late for Alibaba to occupy the Chinese tablet market?

According to Stratege Analytics said:

The third quarter of global tablet sales reach 167 million units, Apple and Google occupied 94% of the market. In addition, Microsoft dominated 2% of the market and RIM’s QNX-based device acquired 1%.

Moreover, HTC, HP and some other Android-based tablet makers allegedly had decreased or ceased investment on its tablets. Lenovo’s K1 is an example that reflected the demand of tablets in China is not high, the company did not sell very well in China, and previously they even had slashed its price from $2400 RMB to $1000 RMB. Let’s wait to see is there going to be any surprise with the YunPad? How can the company make use of its famous e-commerce website Taobao and Alibaba to cooperate with Aliyun-based tablet and smartphones?

Source: TechWeb, Chinaz