14 DAY TRIAL // Acer and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba planned to announce the launch of the CloudMobile smartphone in the Mainland yesterday.
However, although Acer CloudMobile is an Android smartphone, the company decided to launch it in China with Alibaba’s proprietary mobile operating system, Aliyun.
Unfortunately, Reuters reports that journalists who went to the launch event had to turn back as they were not allowed to attend the previously announced press conference.
According to an Alibaba Cloud Computing official, the launch of the CloudMobile smartphone had been canceled due to Google’s pressures.
Apparently, the search giant informed Acer a few hours before the launch event that if the company plans to go ahead with the release of the CloudMobile powered by Aliyun, then it will cancel the collaboration on Android products.
Even though neither Google, nor Acer commented on the CloudMobile’s canceled launch, Alibaba Cloud Computing came forward with an official statement that somewhat explains the reasons behind the canceling.
“Our partner received notification from Google that if the new product launch with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorization with Acer.”
We’re pretty certain that Acer wouldn’t have had any problems with Google, if the CloudMobile smartphone would have been powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich platform as it was meant in the first place.
China is one of the largest, if not the largest, smartphone market in the world, and Android has a big chunk of the market share, though with iPhone 5 and Nokia Windows Phone 8 new devices that were recently announced, the battle for the dominant share will be fierce.
This is why Google doesn’t want any other players in the Chinese market, which might steal some of its less dedicated fans. Sorry Aliyun fans, but it looks like Acer CloudMobile will only be available on the market with Android onboard.