DingTalk, Alibaba’s Office Software Platform, Establishes Audio and Video Division

Chinese media 36Kr reported today that Alibaba‘s office software DingTalk has recently set up an Audio and Video Division which will include a specialized audio laboratory in the division. The new division of the company will be led by acoustic expert Feng Jinwei.

Feng Jinwei previously worked in Alibaba‘s DAMO Academy, and his research interests were communication audio and acoustics. Before joining Alibaba, Feng was the chief engineer of acoustic design and signal processing for Polycom, a global leader in the manufacturing of audio and video conference equipment.

DingTalk is China’s leading intelligent mobile office platform, developed by Alibaba Group and is provided free of charge to all Chinese enterprises for business communication and work collaboration needs. According to QuestMobile’s data, in September 2021, the number of monthly active users of the DingTalk platform was around 196 million, followed by the enterprise version of Tencent’s WeChat, ByteDance’s Feishu and Huawei’s WeLink.

In the field of audio and video conference, DingTalk started earlier. As early as 2016, voice calls and other functions were launched in DingTalk. From 2017 to 2019, video conferencing, group live-streaming, video conferencing hardware, and educational classrooms were launched one after another. The main goal of the new division is to improve the competitiveness of DingTalk’s audio and video products, while the audio laboratory focuses on the research of audio technology and algorithm innovation.

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Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, online meetings have become the go-to tool for internet giants to reach consumers. For small and medium-sized enterprises and individual users, many online conference products are provided free of charge, while for technology giants, they value the ability of online conference products to reach enterprises. One person engaged in conference product operations told 36 Kr that conference products can often be used to get in touch with more customers in the industry.