Friday, September 21, 2012

Alibaba’s mobile OS partnership launch halted


News this week: Hangzhou-based e-commerce company, Alibaba Group, and computer manufacturer Acer had scheduled a joint press conference to launch a new smartphone. The event was cancelled at the last minute as Google stepped in to halt what Google deems to be a breach of the Android Open Handset Alliance agreement – signed by Acer.

Acer and Alibaba’s Cloud Computing unit were set to unveil the Acer CloudMobile A800 smartphone, which runs on the Alibaba developed mobile operating system, Aliyun 2.0 cloud OS.

Google’s Android chief, Andy Rubin, described the Aliyun platform as a modified version of Android which is incompatible with other Android devices and thus, as a member of the Open Handset Alliance, Acer’s use of Aliyun would be a breach of that alliance agreement.

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