Smartphones are generating new battlefields between those who want to service applications through the cloud and those that wish to distribute them through tightly controlled App marketplaces.

Ironically, it is the Chinese who believe their new mobile OS called Aliyun, built on Linux open source, is the true flag bearer for a new generation of cloud computing applications and websites which will run remotely in Alibaba’s cloud and mainly appeal to a Chinese audience (shortly set to overtake the United States as the world’s largest smartphone user base).

The hardware they chose to launch this assault was Acer, who enthusiastically partnered with Alibaba, only to be reprimanded by Google who claimed the Aliyun mobile OS was merely a knock-off of  the Android platform, currently governed by the Google-initiated Android Open Handset Alliance (OHA).

Google claims Alibaba, in making Aliyun, “forked” the operating system, which is now no longer …