by ISSIE LAPOWSKY
The logo of Alibaba Group is seen inside the company’s headquarters in Hangzhou PHOTO/Aly Song/REUTERS/Corbis
Alibaba is already big. But its ambitions are much—much—bigger.
That fact became crystal clear this week when the Chinese tech giant announced that in two months it’s launching a new streaming video service called TBO, short for Tmall Box Office. In a meeting with reporters, Alibaba’s head of digital entertainment Patrick Liu said the company’s goal is “to become like HBO in the United States, to become like Netflix in the United States.”
But that’s not the half of it.
With this announcement, on top of everything else it already does, Alibaba is now officially competing not just with Netflix for Chinese consumers’ attention, but with just about every major US tech company, from Google to Amazon to Apple. And, because Alibaba has the home field advantage in China, that means that as Alibaba’s empire expands, it is becoming that much harder for American tech companies, many of which view China as the next frontier for growth, to break into a market that has already been nearly impossible for foreign companies to penetrate.
In addition to its e-commerce operations, Alibaba also has a foothold in cloud computing, mobile payments, search, and several strategic investments in ride-sharing. It’s explored messaging apps and social networks—essentially every corner of the digital world. Which is why, according to Rajeev Chand, managing director of the investment bank Rutberg & Co., it’s not altogether surprising that video streaming, which Alibaba has already dabbled in through an investment in Chinese streaming site Youku, would be next on the company’s ever growing list of new markets.
“There’s no question that Alibaba has as vast and ambitious an agenda as any US tech company,” Chand says. “For them to expand into online video is natural.”
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