Alibaba Cloud announced on Thursday that it would reduce prices on some of its products by up to 55%, aiming to attract heavy users, especially artificial intelligence software developers.
This marks the second time in less than a year that the cloud division of Alibaba Group Holding has implemented price cuts, following reductions of up to 50% in April.
Over 100 products will see an average price reduction of 20%, showcasing Alibaba’s ongoing efforts to encourage developers to leverage its cloud services for building data-intensive AI models and applications.
As one of China’s early entrants into cloud computing, Alibaba Cloud currently serves approximately one-third of the local market.
Canalys analyst Zhang Yi predicts that Alibaba’s discount initiative may prompt competitors to also lower their prices.
“Alibaba still follows the strategy of attracting customers with low prices, targeting especially the medium and small customers who are more price-sensitive,” she said.
Existing customers are eligible to benefit from the reduced rates if they opt to renew their contracts with Alibaba for another year.
