Recently, Aliyun and Acer cancelled the launch event for the latest smartphone. It is said that because of the obstruction from Google, the launch event had come to a temporary cancelation.
Last Tuesday, Acer made an announcement that they were going to launch a new smartphone A800 with Aliyun mobile OS. Developed by Alibaba Group, Aliyun mobile operation system beard the mission of countervailing with Google’s Android System. However, the planned launch event, which should have started on the afternoon of Sep 13, turned out to be cancelled only one hour before the start time.
Shortly afterwards, Aliyun Company made an official statement, “our cooperative partner received a notice from Google. It said that Google would break ties of its cooperation of Android and relevant technologies with Acer if Acer went ahead and installed Aliyun OS.”
In other words, Google will starve out Acer once Acer Smartphone adopted Aliyun system. At the moment, Google’s Android Operation System occupies more than 60% market share in the global mobile market. That’s why it can play such a powerful role as the obstruction against Aliyun System’s development.
Ren Zhengfei, the head of the handset business at Huawei Corp., had showed his worries in an internal presentation, “indeed, the reason why we develop terminal operation system is out of the strategic need. So we can have the substitutes once the main producers starve us out.” From what he said, we can anticipate a phenomenon that most hand-set vendors are in search for substitutes in case of emergency, from which Alibaba sees room for home-grown operation system like Aliyun.
Though occupying more than 60% market share, Google’s leading role isn’t safe at all. While Windows Phone is the most obvious competitor, other lesser-known platforms such as Aliyun are also drawing attention.
Aliyun expects the number of smartphone manufacturers using Linux-based Aliyun to increase to five by the end of this year from the current two: Beijing Tianyu Communication Equipment Co., whose phones are sold under its K-Touch brand, and the major home appliances maker Haier Electronics Group Co.. Acer is the third one.
Alibaba, who operates 2 popular shopping websites Taobao and Tmall, provides its Aliyun with advantages like the integration of the online payment. Also, according to a report by the BCG, China already has 193 million online shoppers, more than 170 million in the U.S. Taobao and Tmall are expecting to host one trillion yuan ($157.6 billion) in transactions this year. Taken this into consideration, we can see the potential of Aliyun as well as the ambition of Alibaba Group.