"Aurora" instead of Android. Why should Huawei switch to the Russian OS and who could benefit from it?

Huawei can not work on Android after the introduction of sanctions

The US Department of Commerce added Chinese to its blacklists

Huawei company on May 15 this year - officiallydue to the fact that the developer’s position is contrary to the country’s security interests. This led to many American companies refusing to work with Huawei, including Google, which owns the Android operating system. All smartphones of the Chinese developer worked on it. The restrictions most likely will not affect devices already sold, but the new Huawei smartphones will not have the application store and almost all Google services - including the Chrome browser, YouTube and Gmail, and Android itself will not be updated.

It’s not completely clear whether Huawei is going toabandon Android, because the operating system has an open version that can be used by any developer. Huawei has already said that in the near future, all the smartphones of the company outside of China will be released on this version of the operating system until the company lifts the sanctions or the developer comes up with an alternative to Android.

Already on May 21, 2019 the US Department of CommerceHuawei issued a temporary permit for the resumption of activities with US companies - until August 19. Officially at the Ministry of Trade, the United States explained this by saying that the authorities are trying to reduce the harm of abruptly stopping the supply of Huawei equipment to American users, and within three months all customers of the Chinese company will be able to find alternative suppliers.

The development of Huawei’s own operating system has been discussed for many years.

Rumors about Huawei developing its ownoperating systems first appeared back in 2018, but practically no details about the fate of the future OS were leaked on social networks, which is a rather rare story for such developments.

It is known that Huawei developed its ownLinux-based Kirin OS operating system since 2012. It was positioned as a multiplatform platform - it can be installed not only on smartphones, but also on tablets and laptops. Protection Kirin OS was created on the principle of iOS, which is almost ideally closed from external threats and the possibility of hacking the smartphone.

In March 2019, the executive director of HuaweiRichard Yu said that the company's own operating system is already ready and is being tested on smartphones, but it will not appear in the public plane until 2020.

Huawei is already testing smartphones with pre-installed Aurora

About testing smartphones with pre-installedAurora reported The Bell, citing its own sources. There is no other information about this yet, but it is known that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping also discussed the possible localization of Huawei production in Russia.

Perhaps the company will collect in the territorycountries are part of their smartphones, produce chips and develop software. At the same time, it is not clear why Huawei, which has been developing its own OS for many years, should test the Aurora. Perhaps, Huawei can use Aurora only for Russian users. The use of the Russian OS, some experts note, will allow authorities and special services to directly block applications and websites prohibited in Russia, to collect the necessary user data under the pretext of “security”.

Huawei officials refusedcomment on information about the localization of production and the transition to Aurora. At the same time, at the end of May 2019, the rector of Novosibirsk State University (NSU), Mikhail Fedoruk, said that Huawei plans to launch its own Telecommunications Equipment Development Center at the university.

“We are negotiating the creation of a large centertogether with Huawei, which already has an office in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok. We are interested in creating a large center under the auspices of the university. <…> We will sign such an agreement in the near future. But the fact that the founder of Huawei said that the center will be in Novosibirsk and on the basis of Novosibirsk State University is a fact,” said NSU Rector Mikhail Fedoruk. It is not yet known what equipment will be developed at this center.

Huawei is gradually becoming the leader in the Russian telecom market

In the Russian market, Huawei is in the leadposition - a smartphone under the Honor brand in the first quarter of 2019 took 27% of the entire market. In the first months of 2019, Huawei sold smartphones in Russia worth about 10 billion rubles.

Huawei is also involved in productiontelecommunications equipment, including the deployment of infrastructure for 5G. It recently became known that Beeline is going to purchase equipment from the company to create 5G networks worth more than 6 billion rubles.

Huawei is called one of the beneficiaries of the "lawSpring". As part of its implementation, MTS and MGTS are going to purchase telecommunications equipment worth at least 25 billion rubles in the coming years. In addition, the company is actively expanding its presence in the Russian market - in addition to the B2C segment, it plans to scale up its retail network, launch music and payment services, and has also rented large capacities in Russian data centers for data localization.

Despite this, part of the Russian elite openlyspeaks out against scaling Huawei in the market. According to Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov, the corporation is a representative of the “big three oligopolies” in the 5G equipment segment along with Cisco and Nokia.

Aurora operates on the basis of the Finnish Sailfish

Sailfish OS has been developing since 2012 Finnishby Jolla - came from Nokia. In 2014, the Russian billionaire Grigory Berezkin became the almost complete owner of Jolla through his ESN group. Then he agreed with the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media to create his own Russian mobile operating system based on Sailfish - Aurora. Since 2016, the Open Mobile Platform company associated with Berezkin, registered in Innopolis, has been developing it.

In 2018, Berezkina bought 75% of the companyRostelecom, the amount of the transaction was not officially disclosed, however, experts fully estimated the asset at $ 50 million. Immediately after the transaction was closed, it became known that all officials, employees of state-owned companies and state employees will receive smartphones from the Russian OS. It was planned that providing 8 million people with smartphones with the Aurora installed would cost the state budget 160 billion rubles.

Aurora works on projects with source code -specifically Mer, a GNU/Linux-based fork of MeeGo. Many Nokia smartphones worked on MeeGo, but the company refused to continue developing the fork. It was after this that part of the programmers broke away from Nokia and made Sailfish.

Almost all applications written for Android can work on Aurora.

Aurora's special feature is its built-in Alien Dalvik virtual machine, a patented alternative to Google's implementation. It allows you to run almost all applications created for Android.

Over the past eight years jolla has released 32updates for Sailfish, and in April 2019, the company announced the integration of the OS with Mer. Mer is not an OS, but a Linux-based component. It is not yet known how this will affect the Aurora, given that the main work processes of Sailfish are still based on Linux.

Sailfish smartphones are already on the market, but very unpopular

The first smartphone preloaded with OS SailfishJolla company introduced another May 20, 2013. It had 16 GB of internal memory, a 4.5-inch Estrade screen, an 8 megapixel camera and a dual-core processor, and the 350 euro smartphone was very similar to Nokia smartphones.

Currently, several smartphones based on Sailfish have been released, the most popular of which is the Sony Xperia X. At the same time, only smartphones with pre-installed Android OS are currently sold on Yandex.Market.

Sony Xperia XA2 can also work with Sailfish,Inoi T8 / T10, Inoi R7, Intex Aqua Fish, Ermak OMP, Ermak 50 and Jala Accione. Programmers enthusiasts have adapted Sailfish also for a huge number of smartphones running on Android and WindowsPhone. Sailfish can not work only on the iPhone.

Civil servants will work at Aurora

On September 5, 2016, the Aurora was incorporated intoThe registry of the Russian software at the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, to which government agencies are obliged to be guided when making purchases of Russian software - and in the list it is the only mobile system. In addition, in 2016, she received a certificate from the Federal Security Service for data protection requirements that do not constitute a state secret.

At the beginning of 2018, the Inoi smartphone is a manufacturerINOI LLC - with the Avrora OS, it occupied 3.8% of the total smartphone market due to the massive purchases of devices by Russian Post. It is known that the company purchased 15 thousand Inoi smartphones for mobile postal and cash terminals (MPKT), with which couriers and postmen go, for more than 171 million rubles - that is, about 11,400 rubles per device, which is cheaper than on the Internet stores, which on average sell Inoi R7 for 11 990 rubles.

Inoi R7 is assembled in China - it is a smartphone withfive-inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 system, 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of built-in flash memory. The smartphone supports LTE networks and has a 2500 mAh battery. The camera resolution is 8 and 5 megapixels.

At the end of 2018, Rostelecom had already spent 116million rubles for the purchase of Inoi R7 smartphones and Inoi T8 tablets for “testing the Sailfish operating system.” The winner of two tenders for 99.9 million rubles and 10 million rubles was the Distribution Center company (VVP Group), the main distributor of Nokia in Russia. In total, Rostelecom intends to sell up to 500 thousand Inoi R7 smartphones in the coming years.

At the same time, Distribution Center, owned by Gleb Sibirtsev, was the only participant in the tenders and, accordingly, the winner.

Tattelecom also purchases Inoi smartphones from VVP Group at a price of 600 rubles apiece.

In addition, Rostelecom held several tenders for testing Sailfish worth about 6 million rubles. The winners were Synclit OJSC and Sputnik PP LLC, a subsidiary of Rostelecom.

Recently, two tender to work with Sailfishpublished VTB - in the amount of 2 million rubles and 2.4 million rubles. Tenderers need to create a bank application for Sailfish OS, as well as the Digital Installer application, a service for Rostelecom’s on-site staff.

Maybe if Huawei starts working on Sailfishand Aurora, Russian smartphones will have a rather serious competitor in this market. Considering the technical capabilities of the Chinese corporation and the prices for which it sells its smartphones, the Inoi brand can remain only for employees of Russian Post and Rostelecom.