E-commerce giant Alibaba aims to tap the growing smart home furniture market by tying up with a dozen domestic home appliance makers to build the largest smart home appliance online distribution platform to meet rising demand from consumers.
The company will also boost collaboration with these makers, including Haier and Midea, to provide them with a sales channel and services to tap the shift toward smart devices.
"We hope to provide home appliance makers with services including online retail capability, finance and logistics services as well as cloud-computing capacity and software support," Zhang Jianfeng, president of Alibaba's retail business group, yesterday told an industry conference co-sponsored by Alibaba, the China Household Electric Appliance Research Institute and industry consultancy China Market Monitor Co.
Alibaba expects sales of smart home appliances to make up over half of its overall home appliance transactions, Zhang said.
Juniper Research's estimates showed China's smart home market to be worth 140 billion yuan (US$22.5 billion) by 2018.
