MediaTek recently announced a strategic collaboration with Chinese internet conglomerate Alibaba to create an AI-based office system and customized AI chips for Alibaba's enterprise app DingTalk, the United Daily News reported on June 27. The first deliverable is expected to hit the market in July, 2018. By now, DingTalk is one of the largest enterprise mobile communication apps in China that have been installed by over 7 million enterprises and 100 million users. Under the tie-up, MediaTek and Alibaba will jointly develop a smart front desk that supports facial recognition and the cooperation will extend reach to other applications such as smart cloud printer in the future. In addition to being the main chip supplier of Alibaba’s smart speaker, MediaTek will create two customized Bluetooth-equipped SoCs (System on Chips), dubbed MT7581 and MT7583, for Alibaba. The smart hardware devices equipped with these AI chips are expected to begin mass production in the second half of the year. In January this year, MediaTek entered a strategic agreement with Alibaba AI Labs to jointly develop smart home protocols, customized IoT chips, and AI smart hardware leveraging IoTConnect, the Lab's self-developed IoT protocol and Bluetooth chip co-developed by both parties, in an effort to help a broad range of smart home devices connect with Tmall Genie, the Lab's first voice-activated assistant.