Column by Timofey Kornev about the diversity of mobile OS in Russia

Against the background of the refusal of a number of government agencies and corporations from foreign mobile operating systems (OS, since mid-summer the Ministry of Digital Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Finance, Rostec and Rosatom have already banned employees from using the iPhone for work communications, arguing that the American OS is unsafe) all It’s becoming more interesting to watch the struggle for survival of the products of specialized Russian developers. Because now there are clearly more of them than a normally functioning market can absorb.

There are about 11 major mobile operating systems around the world; there are local ones, for example, in China (HarmonOS) and India (BharOS). Meanwhile, only in Russia are they trying to develop Aurora (OMP, owned by Rostelecom), Kaspersky OS, Astra Mobile (Astra Group of Companies), ROSA (developed by STC IT ROSA of the structures of the former Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman), Red OS ( “Red Soft”) and the development of “Kernel” based on the open source Android. At the end of 2022, it became known that VK, Sber, Yandex and other companies are planning to create a consortium to develop a Russian analogue of Android. There is no current information about the fate of the project, but, according to my information, another system will soon appear: BazAlt SPO is overseeing the development of the ALT Mobile OS.

But the main problem for migrating users to new OSes has not gone away – the lack of programs and applications adapted for them. The developers focus on Android and iOS, which are in demand by consumers. Most Russian operating systems are developed based on Linux, but, for example, Aurora has closed parts of the code. Kaspersky OS has its own kernel. And if Linux is a fairly old system, for which, in general, a lot of programs have already been created, whose adaptation to mobile versions may not be very expensive, then with Kaspersky OS and Aurora it is more and more difficult and expensive. The creators of the latter have already taken care of the “crutches” and offer users an emulator in the form of Avroid (see “Kommersant” from September 11).

The fact that the Rostelecom system has an emulator and an application store from VK, on ​​the one hand, gives it advantages. But the developers insist that even taking this into account, adapting applications for systems on Linux, and especially Android, will be much easier and cheaper.

Observing this entire zoo of decisions, it becomes obvious that sooner or later the authorities will have to indicate to the developers the vector of development, that is, clearly say which hare to chase. Otherwise, no one will survive.

Therefore, it is likely that in the coming year we should expect the selection of the most promising mobile OS, as the Ministry of Digital Development has already done with computer systems, where Astra Linux, Viola OS and Red OS were identified, for which it is necessary to write software if the developer wants to qualify for privileges.