Alibaba to launch mobile gaming platform

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group said Wednesday it will launch a mobile gaming platform in a move to tap into the country's booming mobile games market.

Alibaba will offer free services to developers of single-player games for the first year, and a revenue sharing model for the second year has not been worked out, according to Liu Chunning, president of Alibaba Digital Entertainment Group.

For jointly operated games, developers will receive 70 percent of revenue, Alibaba will take 20 percent to cover costs and marketing, and the remaining 10 percent will be used to support rural education.

The mobile gaming platform will provide users and developers standardized accounts, payment options, data collection and the company's cloud computing platform, AliCloud services.

Last year, Alibaba made a string of deals with emerging IT companies, including investments in Sina Weibo, Amap and Xiami Music.

The huge number of registered Alibaba users is the company's biggest advantage in tapping into the mobile games market, according to Liu.

China's mobile games market hit 11.2 million yuan (1.8 billion U.S. dollars) in 2013, up 246.9 percent year on year, according to a national mobile game industry summit that opened in Hangzhou on Wednesday.