NetEase reportedly will be marching into the Smartphone market to launch a joint-force smartphone characterized by 4.3 inch display, 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and most importantly Android 4.0 system and a price tag under RMB 1,000. If this turns out to be true, then it’ll make NetEase the sixth Chinese Internet company which shows interests in developing a proprietary phone after Xiaomi, Alibaba.com, Baidu.com, Shanda Interactive and Qihoo 360.
Ding Lei, CEO of NetEase told Wall Street in the conference call for its latest earnings report that they paid much attention to the popularization of smartphones in China. Ding acknowledged that a NetEase-branded smartphone focusing on its core users would be beneficial to its business. The company itself has a lot of popular apps, such as NetEase News, NetEase Reading and Youdao dictionary.
However, Kaifu Lee earlier commented on the frenzy of “making your own phone”, claiming he’s not that into this idea that Internet companies struggles to make hardware instead of developing their core business. At the end of the day, Internet and smartphones are two totally different industries, and internet companies hardly can be successful, take a look at the company behind Android, Google.