Following the US government trade ban last month, Huawei lost business ties with several American companies, including Google, dealing a huge blow to its Android smartphone business. The Chinese phonemaker is building an Android-based operating system of its own now. However, building an OS from the scratch is by no means an easy task. While it continues working on its OS, supposedly called HongMeng OS in China, the company is also exploring other options, in case it has to completely forego Android.
There aren’t many options out there, but Huawei still seems to have zeroed in on one of them. A report from Russia suggests that the Chinese company may make Aurora OS its Android alternative. Aurora OS is a Russian-made mobile OS based on the open-source Sailfish OS Linux distribution developed by Finnish company Jolla.
Huawei exploring Aurora OS
The Bell, a Russian publication founded and operated by famous Russian journalist Yelizaveta Osetinskaya, recently reported that Huawei executive Guo Ping discussed using Aurora OS with Konstantin Noskov, the Minister of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media of the Russian Federation. Huawei is already testing Aurora on a few of its devices, the portal reported.
Aurora isn’t among the most popular mobile operating system out there, neither is the Sailfish OS. However, its focus on privacy and security has won over many users. Huawei has been long subject to security grills by governments across the Europe and the America. An OS that prioritizes privacy and security might help the company’s cause to some extent.
However, a non-Android OS may still find it difficult to survive in the current market. Samsung, despite being the number one smartphone vendor in the world for years now, failed with the Tizen OS for smartphones. App support is the big issue. Huawei is said to be reaching to app developers to publish their apps on its app store, Huawei App Gallery. Whether it manages to pursue them to build apps for the Aurora OS, if the need be, remains to bee seen. But that’s for another day. Huawei would still want to go with its own Android fork as the first choice.
