China is entering the software market by offering a China-developed operating system which would give smartphone users an alternative to the Android or Apple iOS.
The operating system, called the China Operating System (COS), was jointly developed by the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Lian Tong Network Communication Technology Inc, which has many different important advantages. For example, the applicability of the COS is not just confined to smartphones but to several other computer-based hardware.
It can be used for different devices including personal computers, tablets and TV set top boxes while the Android and iOS are mainly for smartphones and tablets alone. Another key feature of the COS is its capability to fix presently encountered programming bugs and errors. Like the iOS, the COS was not developed to support different online application stores, unlike Andorid that is compatible with various applications stores.
This system is a product of Chinese technology. According to Li Minshu director of the institute, the release of the new COS seeks to break the monopoly of fundamental software by foreign companies and introduce an operating system with their own intellectual property rights. Based on media reports, Google's Android had 81 percent of the smartphone market worldwide, while Apple iOS had 12.9 percent of the market as of the end of the third quarter of 2013.
In China, reports released in October showed that Android had 78.1 of the market share , iOS had 15.5 percent while Windows phone had 3.5 percent.
Chen Feili, deputy general manager of Lian Tong Network Communication Technology said that promoting the COS use on a wider range of hardware and developing more applications are the next steps in line for them in developing COS.