Alibaba launches world's 1st eight-core phone

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd teamed up with Shenzhen ZOPO Communications Equipment Ltd to launch the world's first eight-core smartphone on Thursday.

The launch came one day after Taiwan-based chipset manufacturer MediaTek unveiled the world's first eight-core mobile chip, the MT6592, in China's southern city of Shenzhen.

The newly released MediaTek processor was warmly received by Chinese smartphone companies, as about a dozen of them, including Coolpad and TCL, are keen to develop eight-core smart devices, according to Xie Qingjiang, general manger of MediaTek.

The latest ZOPO eight-core smartphone, ZOPO 9520, is designed for zealous smartphone users who demand high quality video and sound experiences, said Wang Peng, chief operating officer of ZOPO.

The 5.5 inch handset runs on Alibaba's Aliyun mobile platform and it is ZOPO's second Aliyun smartphone product.

"All of ZOPO's future smart devices will adopt the Aliyun mobile operating system. ZOPO hopes its alliance with Alibaba will create devices with a better mobile Internet experience," Wang added.

ZOPO will announce prices for the ZOPO 9520 on Dec 15 and the products will hit the Chinese market on Dec 21.

ZOPO, established in Shenzhen in 2011, gained fame in the Chinese market by launching the country's first glasses-free 3D android smartphone ZP200 in 2012.

MediaTek, already the biggest mobile chipset maker in the Chinese market, has seen its products mostly adopted by low-end mobile phone vendors.

Analysts argued that the eight-core CPU may help MediaTek penetrate the high-end smartphone processor sector, which is now dominated by the US-based Qualcomm Inc.

Qualcomm has explicitly said that it was not passionate about producing eight-core products, since the company focuses on strengthening the function of its current quad-core or dual-core chipsets.

In 2012, MediaTek had a 42 percent share of the processors in smartphones made by Chinese local vendors, while Qualcomm had 37 percent, according to Gartner.