A research paper investigating China's way forward in the mobile world has been unveiled, and has discovered something that has unsettled China's leadership. According to the paper, China is "too dependent on Android" for their mobile growth and development. The report goes on to criticise Google for discriminating against Chinese manufactures by delaying the sharing of vital code. Google has also used commercial agreements to "restrain the business development of mobile devices of [Chinese] companies." Google is also castigated for having a tight grip on the development of Android, as the report notes: "While the Android system is open source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google."
Despite the criticism of Google and their practises, the report does not suggest any course of action. According to Reuters, the report could signal regulations of Android on the horizon, after it praised home-grown companies such as Baidu, Alibaba Group and Huawei Technologies. According to Duncan Clark, chairman of the technology consultancy company BDA, regulation is very common if "[China] can position the regulations as helping out domestic companies," but "Android's success has underpinned a lot of the growth in China smartphone vendors in recent years." The iPhone is available in China, however it is a premium phone and cannot be afforded by many of China's residents.
Google has had run-ins with the Chinese government before, when they halted access to the search engine. The Chinese authorities then allowed access to Google, but only if they promised to censor some of their content. In January 2013, Google turned off their warning that users could be searching for censored content. This report could be be the start of new censorship, but this time on smartphone usage.
Source: Reuters
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