Russia has made no secret of the fact that it wants to reduce its dependence on foreign software, especially applications and platforms from Western companies. The nation's government has been keen to encourage domestic firms to buy homegrown software and hardware, but it's about to go one step further, by developing its own smartphone OS.
Over 95% of Russia's tech is currently sourced from foreign vendors, but the country's Minister of Communications Nikolai Nikiforov wants to bring that down to 50% over the next ten years, according to Russian daily newspaper RBC.
A big step in that direction will be the development of a Russian smartphone operating system, and as ZDNet reports, Nikiforov has announced plans to create an "independent" OS based upon Jolla Sailfish. Jolla has already met with Russian representatives to begin work on the new OS, but a timetable for its delivery has not yet been announced.
Of course, those of you paying attention will have already spotted that Jolla isn't a Russian company - it's Finnish - but the Linux-based Sailfish OS is open source, which makes it much more attractive to the Russian government than other options with proprietary source code.
Earlier this year, Nikiforov expressed his admiration for open-source platforms like Sailfish and Samsung's Tizen, and said that the government would offer "grants to developers who will migrate their applications from the Android and iOS monopoly" to these open-source alternatives.
Source: ZDNet / RBS | Original Russian flag image via Shutterstock
14 Comments
Load the comments and join the conversation!
Read the comments, ask the editors questions, show respect and join the conversation.