India achieved in two years what China didn’t in decade
TAIPEI: Forgive the Chinese if they start feeling a certain amount of OS envy.
For more than 15 years, China has unsuccessfully attempted to come up with a homegrown operating system that would be loved by the masses and allow the country to be freed from the shackles of Western technological imperialism.
India has achieved that feat in less than two years.
Indus OS is now India’s second-most popular smartphone platform with a 6.3% market share, behind Alphabet’s Android. The multilingual system, one of many based on Android itself, reached No. 2 at the end of 2015 and maintained that position in the first two quarters, according to data released this week by Counterpoint Research. It leads iOS and other Android variants including Xiaomi’s MIUI and Cyanogen.
China’s path toward operating system nationalism is littered with the shells of failures including China OS (COS), Kylin, Red Flag and YunOS. They were all unsuccessful in getting traction for varying but similar reasons that include being pushed by the government or by a corporation with skin in the game. It matters little whether they’re for desktop or mobile devices, China has failed at both.