Alibaba is expanding cloud products with Livestream shopping

June 9, 2021: -Alibaba has launched a slew of new cloud computing products as the Chinese e-commerce giant looks to expand across Asia.

Cloud computing can be viewed as a key profit driver for Alibaba over the long term, and in the past few years, it can be boosted its presence aggressively outside of China.

On Tuesday, Alibaba announced is planning to open a new data center in the Philippines by the end of the year and launching a third data center in Indonesia. In addition, they were expanding data centers that allow cloud providers to boost their capacity in certain countries or regions.

Alibaba also launched a cloud-based live streaming product designed for online shopping. It will permit e-commerce players to launch a live stream shopping feature on their websites hosted on a cloud of Alibaba.

Livestream shopping involves a host talking about products that customers can buy directly via the live broadcast. It has become prevalent in China and is growing in other parts of Asia.

The Chinese e-commerce firm hopes that a product can help it stand out from U.S. rivals, which include Microsoft and Amazon, in the cloud market.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Alibaba was the most prominent public cloud market vendor for the 2020 year with a 19.2% share, according to IDC, boosted by success in China. Amazon was second with a 10.5% share.

However, in the global market, Alibaba is still trailing Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

The cloud announcements of Alibaba came after it reported its first net loss as a public company from January to March. In addition, the company was hit with a massive $2.8 billion fine due to an anti-monopoly investigation by Chinese authorities.

Maggie Wu, Alibaba’s CFO, said the company would invest  “incremental profits and additional capital” in “new businesses and key strategic areas” in its present fiscal year.

In China, Alibaba is facing growth in the competition from other technology giants, which include Huawei and Tencent, which more recently have stepped up their cloud computing investments.