Huawei explores Russia OS deal for tablets

Huawei reportedly opened talks with the Russian Ministry of Communications to install the country’s operating system Aurora on the vendor’s tablets next year, Reuters reported.

According to two sources, Huawei is considering installing the OS on 360,000 of its tablets to conduct Russia’s population census, which is held by Aurora’s owner, Rostelecom.

The collaboration could see the installation of Aurora on the tablets by August next year. It would mark a major move by the Chinese vendor, which is searching for an alternative to Google’s Android.

Huawei is looking at ways to reduce its reliance on US technology after being hit by a well-documented import ban earlier this year.

It officially launched its own home-grown OS, dubbed HarmonyOS, earlier this month as a way to safeguard itself should it be stripped of access to Android.

Rostelecom’s Aurora is a Russia-only OS, but it is currently not in use. A source told Reuters the initial play would be a pilot project. “We see it as the first stage of launching the Russian OS on Huawei devices.”

Rostelecom also confirmed to Reuters that “various options for collaboration with Huawei are being considered with participation of the Ministry of Communications”, but added it was unable to disclose details.

It is far fetched as Russia OS, it is actually from Finland as Sailfish OS contributed by Jolla (some clever devs from Nokia were handling this).

Yep, Jolla/Sailfish OS mostly on Sony smartphones, so it means that we will get that on Huawei also, and get the security too ;o), good job the Chinese (vs US).

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