China develops mobile OS to take on foreign platforms

China has been pushing a mobile operating system designed to offer a state-approved alternative to foreign platforms.

The China Operating System (COS) as it is called, would first launch on handheld devices, possibly expanding to other platforms later.

According to reports from tech blog Engadget China, the operating system had been designed  by developers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences along with private firms. The OS would be based said on some flavour of the open-source kernel Linux, and would be pitched  against Android and iOS in the mobile space.

The OS is being offered as a Chinese-made alternative to the foreign-developed Google-driven Android (also powered by the Linux kernel) and Apple's iOS.

China, which has emerged as a manufacturing centre for hardware, is said to be seeking a locally developed OS that can better handle language input as also other regional quirks where foreign software failed to measure up.

Reports also quote officials criticising the poor security protections afforded by foreign-made handsets.

The latest effort to build a home-grown Chinese OS, comes after the launch in 2009 of the oPhone project launched with a similar goal of providing a platform for Chinese smartphones. The OS however, failed to gain a strong presence in the market and fizzled out.

COS would look to enter a booming Chinese market, which, according to many vendors was one of the largest untapped markets in the world.

Apple boss Tim Cook hailed the launch of the iPhone, earlier this month with carrier China Mobile as a 'watershed moment' for the company.

The OS, has been developed by the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Shanghai Lian Tong Network Communication Technology Inc.

According to the director of the institute, Li Minshu, the release of COS aimed to break the monopoly that foreign companies held on fundamental software, and to introduce an operating system its own intellectual property rights.

According to developer Wu Yanjun, the COS differed from Android and iOS in three respects, its applicability to a wide range of devices, including TV set-top boxes; it was not designed to support various online Aapplication stores and that it had fixed a lot of existing faults and over 100 other bugs.

According to Wu, with the existing vulnerabilities fixed, hackers would not be able to remotely control a PC or a smartphone running COS.