Taiwan’s Acer will this week launch a handset in China running on Aliyun, the OS developed by local e-commerce giant Alibaba which is based on Android. Acer is the third vendor to launch a handset in the country running Alibaba’s OS, although it is the most high profile.

Other major Chinese companies who have developed their own take on Android in competition with Alibaba include China Mobile, China Unicom and Baidu.

Aliyun was reportedly chosen by Acer because it is easy for first-time users to navigate. Unlike with the conventional Android OS, its apps are web-based.  The other two vendors using the Alibaba OS , which launched in summer 2011, are Beijing Tianyu Communications Equipment Co and Haier.

According to Canalys figures published last month, 81 percent of the smartphones shipped in the country in Q2 2012 run Android. China dominates global smartphone sales, contributing more than a quarter of the total.

Acer needs a boost to make an impression in China’s smartphone market where it lags leading vendors including Samsung, ZTE, Lenovo, Huawei and Apple, among others. The handset launched this week is called the CloudMobile A800 and will sell for CNY2,999 (US$473). Acer plans to release another Aliyun-based model next month and more next year, the company says. Acer will also release the same handset outside China, although internationally it will be powered by the conventional Android OS rather than Aliyun.