Alibaba Cloud launches its first personal cloud product, challenging Baidu and Tencent
- The service, which opened for public testing on Monday, offers users up to two terabytes of free storage and ‘unlimited’ uploading and downloading speeds
- China’s personal cloud service market, which had 404 million users last year, continues to grow amid a rapid uptake of online services by consumers
The service, which opened for public testing on Monday for both Android and iOS systems, offers users up to two terabytes of free storage and “unlimited” uploading and downloading speeds, according to a company statement. However, these speeds depend on the internet provider.
Founded in 2009, Alibaba Cloud is China’s biggest cloud computing services provider, mainly focused on enterprise businesses. The expansion into the personal cloud service market is aimed at gaining a slice of a segment that had 404 million users in 2020, according to estimates from data mining and analysis firm iiMedia Research.
Search engine giant Baidu topped the personal cloud service market in China with nearly 40 million monthly active users (MAU) for its Baidu Wangpan as of last July, followed by social media giant Tencent’s Weiyun with 4.4 million MAU, iiMedia data showed.
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“Baidu Wangpan has a temporary advantage in terms of user scale, but the demand for personal online disks continues to increase … there is still room for change in the industry landscape in the future,” said Zhang Yi, chief executive at Shenzhen-based iiMedia Research.