Chinas Alibaba has announced a 1bn yuan (£105m) subsidy fund for handset makers that adopt its smartphone operating system – which it is re-branding from Aliyun to Alibaba Mobile Operating System.

The countrys largest eCommerce service provider – an Amazon equivalent – launched Aliyun in 2011 and was set to unveil a handset with Taiwans Acer back in September, but journalists were turned away from the press event on the day.

A statement from Alibaba at the time of the aborted CloudMobile A800 launch said that Acer had “received notification from Google that if the new product launch with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorisation with Acer.” Previous versions of the CloudMobile handsets had been pre-loaded with the Android OS. We are awaiting comment from Acer on the status of the A800.

Google was criticised by Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last month for having too much control of its smartphone market.

Willing manufacturers will be given 1 yuan per month to provide Alibabas OS to Chinese consumers.