Its market share in China dropped to 32.6 per cent in the second half of 2022 from 34.5 per cent in the first half, according to a report published by research firm IDC.
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After long absence from China, Jack Ma makes rare appearance to visit school in Hangzhou
Alibaba Cloud stated in April that it would cut prices of its core products and services in China by up to 50 per cent starting May 7. The range of price cuts for global partners is up to 40 per cent, the company said in a separate post on its official WeChat account on Monday.
Alibaba Cloud’s overseas expansion plan is also facing challenges. The US has stepped up scrutiny of Chinese cloud service providers.
A group of Republican senators last month publicly urged the Biden administration to impose sanctions on Huawei Cloud and other Chinese cloud service providers, citing national security and data privacy concerns.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google cloud, the three US-based cloud service providers, jointly accounted for 65 per cent of total global cloud spending in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to research firm Canalys.
Alibaba’s overseas cloud business has increased by more than 20 times in the past five years, according to the company. Alibaba Cloud provides services to more than 4 million enterprises globally, and more than one third of theses are top 500 companies in the world.
“We are committed to growing together with our global partners and providing them with even stronger support to expand their businesses into Southeast Asia and beyond,” Edward Cai, chief commercial officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said at the company’s Partner Summit 2023 in Singapore on Monday.
Alibaba Cloud’s overseas push comes amid a broad restructuring of the Alibaba Group and a potential price war among cloud service providers. Under the sweeping reorganisation of Alibaba’s US$257 billion empire, the cloud business will become one of six independently run entities.
The news is published by EMEA Tribune & SCMP
