Citing reduced dependence on imported OSes, China develops its own OS.
In bid to reduce dependance on foreign companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple, China is developing their own operating software (OS) which might be finished by October 2014, said Xinhua news agency on Sunday, August 24, 2014.
The government backed OS will make its way onto desktops in October, while mobile support will be coming in at a later time, a report in the People’s Post and Telecommunications News (official trade paper published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) said.
There has always been tension between China and the US-based technology companies over cyber security issues. In March 2013, China had said that the Android mobile operating system, run by Google, had too much control over the Chinese smartphone industry and this affected the local firms.
While there already are some Chinese operating systems available in the market, they are not at the same level as Windows, iOS or Android. Ni Guangnan, who heads an official OS development alliance said, “We hope to launch a Chinese-made desktop operating system by October supporting app stores.” He also added that they needed to fill the void that exists between Chinese and US technology.
Creating a home-grown OS became more vital in May 2014, when the Chinese government banned the use of Windows 8 on government computers. The previously used Windows XP also became unsafe in April 2014, when Microsoft ended support for the platform.
