Alibaba to boost mobile e-commerce

China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group announced on Tuesday that the company will invest heavily to help e-retailers boost their business on mobile devices.

Alibaba will soon launch an online platform that is specially designed for mobile e-commerce and the company will give free Ali-yun OS mobile phones to all of its more than 7 million e-retailers on Taobao.com, one of Alibaba's online marketplaces.

According to Alibaba's press release, the company is expected to invest at least 500 million yuan ($82 million) on the project by the end of December. The project is part of Alibaba's new strategy named "ALL IN", which was announced by the company's chief executive officer Lu Zhaoxi in October as an attempt to boost Alibaba's wireless sector.

"We hope all of Alibaba's e-retailers will participate in the campaign and move quickly into the era of mobile Internet," said Lu.

Taobao and Tmall, Alibaba's two main platforms, topped 35 billion yuan in sales in the 24-hour China's online shopping festival on Nov 11. About 5.35 billion yuan worth of goods were purchased by online shoppers through their mobile phones, said the company.