Chinese tech firm Vivo and Alibaba will partner to create a new smartphone to be released later this year.
The phone’s design will reflect big-data insights gleaned by Alibaba’s Tmall, in line with Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s ‘New manufacturing’ concept under which consumer behaviour has a significant input into product design. This strategy is thought to boost the chances of a producer releasing a successful product.
Both firms have established innovation labs dedicated to the project.
Vivo’s head of e-commerce division Wang Yonggang said, “Our foremost intention is always to create products that our customers truly like and based on their needs. [They] can essentially decide what kind of products they want. This is really meeting the needs of the end-users.”
Tmall has so far entered into collaborations with 62 companies, many of which are leaders in their fields.
