Russian OS developers want to install them on smartphones from “friendly” countries

Domestic developers are negotiating to port their OS to phones from “friendly” countries, including China, India and Vietnam. Companies are considering the possibility of ordering test batches of smartphones for sale in the consumer and commercial sectors of the Russian Federation under original brands. This will allow Russian operating systems to increase their audience, but the devices will not be able to qualify for the government and commercial segment, since they will not be sufficiently protected, market participants believe.

Several sources in the IT market told Kommersant that a number of Russian mobile OS developers are interested in porting their systems to Indian and Chinese smartphones, since there are few phones from domestic manufacturers and they are too expensive. “The range of Russian smartphones is small, and they are much more expensive than their foreign counterparts; because of this, the devices are not yet ready for sales on the mass market, and their use is justified only if we are talking about processing sensitive information,” the chairman confirmed to Kommersant. Board of Directors of Basalt SPO Alexey Smirnov. He added that the ALT Linux Team community (overseen by BazAlt SPO) is developing its OS for Chinese PinePhone with an open hardware architecture.

Among Chinese devices, there is a wide range of prices, from completely cheap to niche ones, with explosion protection or for special climatic zones, says one of Kommersant’s interlocutors. He explains that the developers’ idea is to negotiate with third-tier Chinese and Indian vendors to produce devices, which will then enter the Russian market under original brands. Commercial Director of Mobile Inform Group Anna Mantsvetova told Kommersant that Russian developers are also negotiating with Vietnamese smartphone manufacturers, without specifying the names.

A representative of Astra Group of Companies (developing the Astra Mobile OS) said that the company works with all manufacturers in the public and commercial sectors, regardless of the country, “focusing on their readiness for technological cooperation,” but “Russian ones are a priority.” He added that the company already has tablets on its own OS from the Chinese Lenovo and Chuwi. STC IT ROSA (developing Rosa OS) and Rostelecom (Aurora OS) claim that they do not negotiate with foreign vendors. RedSoft (RED OS) did not respond to Kommersant; Kaspersky Lab (Kaspersky OS) declined to comment.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, many Russian companies promised to localize the production of smartphones in the Russian Federation in order to receive preferences in government procurement: Fplus, GS Group, Yadro, etc. Some began to develop devices for the consumer market. Thus, the founder of NCC Alexander Kalinin said in February that he would invest 10 billion rubles. in the development of phones for individuals (see “Kommersant” dated February 28).

The more accessible devices on Russian operating systems become, the faster application software for them will develop, Fplus believes: “If domestic developers manage to attract investors from abroad, this will be a big victory for our software industry.”

However, not all device manufacturers view the release of Russian OSes on foreign smartphones positively, and they note a number of problems. Thus, according to one of Kommersant’s interlocutors among manufacturers for the public sector and corporate customers, foreign devices when porting a trusted Russian OS will not be able to ensure security, since the Russian side will not have the source code of the smartphone hardware.

Ms. Mantsvetova noted that the main difficulty in negotiations with foreign vendors will be Google’s policy, which can revoke licenses for their services (maps, GooglePlay, YouTube, etc.) from companies cooperating with OS developers from the Russian Federation: “In dialogue with Russian developers Only small Chinese companies can enter, which cannot provide decent support for their products, but can sell the source codes for them, which will allow localizing their production in the Russian Federation.”

Timofey Kornev