The Chinese government has announced the launch of a smartphone operating system, which is set to go head-to-head against Apple iOS and Google Android, according to official state media reports.
State-owned newspaper The Global Times describes the China Operating System (COS) as a “strategic product for national security, which has become more urgent in the wake of recent incidents such as the US intelligence scandal of Prism and Windows ending further support of its XP system”.
The software, developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), reportedly works on smartphones, TV set-top boxes and tablets, with the agency claiming 100,000 apps already work with the system.
“The release of COS, intended to break the foreign monopoly in the field of infrastructure software, the operating system, will lead to and develop China's own intellectual property rights and Chinese characteristics,” a CAS statement says.
While the operating system is based on the Linux kernel – like Android and Firefox OS – and official reports admit it “has absorbed the merits of other open-source systems”, the developers insist it is “all original work from the underlying code to the user interface”.
However, even official state media reports acknowledge doubts in some sectors over the new mobile platform.
“News about this system drew almost unanimous doubts and mocking on the Internet, with many questioning why the government has funded yet another ambitious project that will not necessarily weather market tests. Some even speculated that it is a modified Android system,
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