Huawei is believed to have been involved in Russian support after the US-led war on the Korean peninsula.
Due to US sanctions, Huawei will not be able to ship Google Android services to its smartphones. It includes not only Google Play, but Google’s major apps like Gmail. For Huawei, it was difficult to sell Android smartphones outside of China.
According to Russia’s state Itar-Tass news agency, the Russian government has proposed Aurora as an operating system for Huawei to replace Android. Aurora is also called Sailfish Mobile OS Rus. The Sailfish operating system was developed by the Finnish company Jolla from Nokia. Aurora is a proprietary operating system developed by Russian companies for Russia, under the formal license of Selphysi.
Aurora development is led by the open mobile platform of the Russian telcos, Rostelecom. The Russian Ministry of Communications issued a certificate to the Aurora that it meets the information security requirements of the government. It is a smartphone operating system certified by the Russian government.
According to Russian media reports, Guo Ping, one of Huawei’s president, has met with Russian Minister of Communications Konstantin Noskov and discussed the possibilities of Huawei’s smartphone with Aurora. According to another source, there was a discussion at the summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has been involved in the production of Huawei products in Russia as part of a technological cooperation exchange to install the Aurora on Huawei smartphones. It also suggested joint development of chips and software. Huawei refused to comment on this, and a spokesman for Los Telecom said that he had heard of the proposal but was willing to cooperate with all mobile product developers.
Another move is that Huawei is developing its own operating system as an alternative to Android. On the 13th, there was a report that Huawei filed a new trademark, Hongmeng (Hongmeng). In China, there is a custom operating system that adds its own store based on the open source version of Android, because Google’s services are not available under government control. Huawei is also one of the reasons for adopting a proprietary operating system.
The impact of the disruption with Google will not be much in China, where such a custom operating system culture has been deeply rooted, but it has a big impact outside of Europe, including Europe. If the Aurora is to be installed, Huawei will be able to make good on its promise of sales to Russian government-related organizations. For Russia, it could be a beneficial transaction involving the US smartphone operating system, which has an impact on the US, and Chinese companies with technology to compete in the chipset field.
However, Aurora is one of only one kind of AINO R7 (INOI R7) that came out in 2017 because of lack of adoption and smartphone adoption. Even if Huawei invests in the development of Aurora smartphones, it is unclear whether it can occupy a large share of the Russian smartphone market. For more information, please click here.