Alibaba targets China's living room with new platform to power smart TVs and set-top boxes
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has today announced that it has developed a smart TV operating system and is working with a number of partners, including Cisco and Chinese manufacturers …
Context & Ripple Effects
Alibaba is entering a television-platform contest that had already drawn Google and its partners seeking a foothold in TV. Its arrangement with Cisco and Chinese manufacturers makes the effort a distribution play across both smart TVs and set-top boxes, rather than a stand-alone software release.
Cisco had also introduced Videoscape Unity for managing video delivery across television, paid services and the internet, giving its participation a direct connection to the delivery layer Alibaba is targeting.
First-order effects
- Alibaba gains an operating-system presence on partner smart TVs and set-top boxes, extending its reach from e-commerce into the home-screen interface.
- Cisco and participating Chinese manufacturers receive a route to bundle their hardware and video-delivery capabilities with Alibaba's platform.
Second-order effects
- Google's earlier television push faces a better-defined platform rival for manufacturer partnerships, with the TV interface becoming the contested asset rather than the hardware alone.
- Manufacturers adopting Alibaba's software become more dependent on the platform's interface and partner ecosystem, reducing the scope to differentiate solely through television hardware.
Third-order effects
- If Alibaba's partner model gains adoption, smart-TV competition will shift toward control of the operating system and its distribution relationships, concentrating leverage with the companies that mediate household screens.
- The move points to television becoming another platform endpoint where commerce, video delivery and device makers are coordinated through a shared software layer.
The trend: Consumer internet platforms are pursuing control of connected-TV operating systems to turn the household screen into a strategic distribution channel.