According to an article published today in the Wall Street Journal:
"Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said it would acquire Kanbox, a Chinese operator of a cloud storage service similar to Dropbox of the U.S., the latest move by the e-commerce giant to broaden its online services.
Alibaba announced the acquisition on its official website Wednesday, but didn't disclose the value of the deal. The Kanbox deal follows Alibaba's other acquisitions earlier this year, including its investment in Sina Corp.'s Twitter-like Weibo microblog business and mobile mapping service provider AutoNavi Holdings Ltd. Twitter like Weibo microblog.
As more Chinese consumers, access online services from multiple devices, Alibaba and other Internet firms that used to provide services mainly through personal computers are trying to reach consumers across all kinds of devices, from desktop personal computers to television sets to mobile devices. With the Kanbox acquisition, Alibaba said it was trying to provide a cloud storage,that allow users to access content from any device".
