We at ALAX are proud to announce that today we signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Gionee, one of China’s and India’s largest smartphone manufacturers. In 2016 it shipped over 40 million smartphones worldwide, and the company’s phones are one of the most popular brands in India. Another reason why we are so glad to have Gionee’s word is the fact that its presence can be seen growing in over 50 global markets.

The intended partnership will see our platform preinstalled on Gionee’s new smartphones, with older models moving to the ALAX platform in line with regular updates. The agreement will allow app developers access to tens of millions of ‘unbanked’ users — particularly in Southeast Asia, China and India, through the blockchain-powered distribution platform. This is where we identified a huge number of future potential users for our project, which already counts a network of over a 100 million end-users.

Access to millions of ‘unbanked’ consumers

How is the mobile games market doing these days? Mobile games revenue in Southeast Asia is predicted to reach USD 2.4 billion by 2021 and according to Newzoo, in 2017 the global mobile and tablet games market exceeded USD 46.1 billion. It represents a 19% interannual growth with Asia-Pacific being by far the largest region seeing immense increase. With other intended partnerships also in the pipeline, ALAX is set to provide app and game developers with access to millions of new consumers in emerging markets.

Did you know that many of these consumers do not have access to credit or debit cards (the World Bank Global Finance Index 2014 identified 2 billion ‘unbanked’ adults worldwide), yet do have relatively easy access to cash and 3G/LTE smartphones?

With the ALAX platform, customers will be able to obtain ALA tokens in cash through the existing Dragonfly retailer network. ALAX tokens are then used in-app to purchase games and apps directly from the developer. Not only does this quicken the transaction and reduce the price of content, it also opens gaming and app purchases to customers without access to traditional methods of payment.

A fairer deal for developers

Traditionally, to buy games or apps, customers had to use PayPal, credit cards, or make payments using prime rate SMS, where mobile network operators would take a 50–70% commission from the price paid by the user for an app/game. According to our estimates, game developers currently receive a maximum of 70% of the profit from an app, and it can often take 3–6 months for all payments to be processed.

In contrast, ALAX token payments will be made directly to the developer, and can then be exchanged for a FIAT currency (USD, EUR, THB, PH, etc) at any time.

Last but not least we have a few more amazing facts to share with you. Note that our final product is currently completing the testing and development stage. We are expecting to release an MVP in the coming weeks, and the platform will be available on both new and existing Gionee devices immediately following the conclusion of our Token Generation Event (TGE), scheduled to start on April 17th. Don’t miss it!

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