Alibaba Buddies Up with Star-studded Partner Team to Deepen Forays into Digital Living Room Market
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced today a plan to construct an all-around family entertainment ecosystem that covers the fields of films & movies, music, game, education and e-commerce based on its set-top-box product Tmall Box.
中国インターネットビジネスで大きな成功を遂げているAlibaba社が、本日、全世帯向け家族用エンターテイメントエコシステムを作ることを発表した。エコシステムは、映画や映像、音楽、ゲーム、教育用システムを含むもので、独自の製品Tmall Boxというset-top-boxをベースに作られる。
Alibaba continues its cooperation with Wasu Media, one of the several state-authorized content providers, in entertainment contents. Wasu Media will contribute more than 6,000 movies and 150,000 hours of TV plays to the ecosystem, according to Liu Chunning, president of Alibaba’s Digital Entertainment Business Department. Alibaba also teamed up with Dolby and DTS, two audio technology companies, to provide better audio and visual experiences. The music contents will be streamed from Xiami, a subsidiary of Alibaba.
In terms of games, Alibaba integrated ten cloud-based games into the system, including several blockbuster games developed by Konami, 2K, and Falcom. Since these games are based on cloud, users can play directly without downloading them to local. Alibaba also joined hands with global leading game developers of EA, Gameloft, Glu Mobile to present more diversified games.
As online education is in full swing, Alibaba tapped this sector by partnering up with TutorABC, the online English leaning brand under Tutor Group, to provide real-time interactive language learning services. The cooperation seems quite natural given that Alibaba has led a nearly US$100 million Series B financing in Tutor Group earlier this year. The contents from child-focused services of Qiaohu, a brand run by Japanese education group Benesse Corporation, and Beva will land on the system this August.
Liu emphasized that all the contents will be regulated under DRM (digital right management) to protect the intellectual rights of content providers.
At the press conference, the internet giant also released two interesting functions for Tmall Box. One is a voice command feature that allows users to search for films and music by voice. The other is M Key, a button dedicated to e-commerce services, like special sales, etc.
このインターネットの巨人はプレスコンファランスにて、Tmall Box向けの2つの興味深い機能も発表した。1つは音声コマンド機能で、ユーザは映像や音楽を音声で検索できる。もう一つはM Keyという、特別セールなど、eコマースサービス専用のボタンである。
すみません、訂正します。QiaohuはBenesseブランドでした。
子供向け~(ベネッセコーポレーション)、===> 日本の教育系企業のBenesse Corporation(ベネッセコーポレーション)が運営するブランド、Qiaohuの子供向け支援コンテンツ、