Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba has unveiled its own mobile OS, known as Aliyun. The K-Touch Cloud-Smart Phone W700, the first mobile phone powered by the OS, will be introduced to the Chinese market at the end of July. The software was developed by the company's cloud computing division and will be integrated on other devices such as mobile phones with larger screens and tablet computers in the coming months. The devices will be offered with a range of cloud services, such as e-mail, internet search, weather updates and mapping and GPS. Alibaba said the use of a cloud platform will not only improve the user experience, as no app downloads are required, but also stimulate developers, who will be able to use web platforms such as HTML5 and JavaScript to reduce complexity and develop web-based apps. The cloud OS users will be able to sync, store and back up data such as contact information, call logs, text messages, notes and photos to AliCloud's remote data centre and can also access and update this data across all their PC and mobile devices. AliCloud will provide each cloud OS user with 100GB of data storage initially, with plans to expand according to user needs. Third-party developers can opt to either develop cloud apps over their own servers or choose to use AliCloud's infrastructure and services at a cost. The cloud OS is the result of three years of development and uses AliCloud's self-developed distributed file system and virtual machine; the cloud OS is also fully compatible with Android-based applications.
