Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has tied up with state-owned China Telecom Corp. Ltd. in selling inexpensive smartphones in smaller cities and rural areas of the country, the Global Times reported.
According to a statement released by Alibaba on April 24, Friday, the phones, dubbed "Tianyi Taobao Shopping Handsets," are sold with an installed app for easy access to Alibaba's Taobao online shopping platform or its YunOS mobile operating system.
The report said that the buyers will be eligible to use the phone for four months of free 2G data service.
The partnership is expected to further expand Alibaba's e-commerce base in poor regions of the country and promote its mobile operating system, the report added.
Further, the Mobile Taobao pre-installed app will come in six models produced by Coolpad, Hisense and TCL.
The report said that Mobile Taobao is China's most popular mobile shopping app and has more than 200 million monthly active users.
The YunOS mobile operating system, on the other hand, will be carried by another eight models, made by less-known brands including Uniscope, Ctyon and Kingsun, and will also provide buyers with an Alibaba account for shopping and cloud-based storage and other services, the report said.
The government said that more than 557 million people in China access the Web through mobile devices, but according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, mobile phone shipments dropped to 389 million in 2014, lower than 423 million the previous year.
Alibaba reported in January that the number of mobile monthly active users nearly doubled in the third quarter, reaching 265 million.
The company announced in February that it is investing a $590-million stake in a small local smartphone maker, Meizu.