We’re sure this is just coincidence but online e-commerce portal Lazada has shown up twice in the news today, once with Alibaba and again with Elephone.
Today it was revealed that Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant (the same company who invested in Meizu last year) has just bought a controlling stake in Lazada.
For those of you who don’t know, Lazada is an e-commerce company that operates in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. Alibaba’s stake in the company is now a cool $500 million, which makes it the controlling partner and gives the company access to an additional 200million users.
Gizchina News of the week
So what has Elephone got to do with Lazada? Well the controversial phone maker has just today announced that it will enter Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam markets by cooperating with who? Yes, Lazada.
It still remains to be seen which phones Elephone plans to launch in the markets, and if they plan to open service centres in the countries too as they have done in Europe.
In other news, our Elephone Explorer Pro action camera sample just arrived with us, so keep an eye out for our unboxing and hands on coming soon.