Android operating system in Huawei smartphones may be replaced by Russian "Aurora"

Rostelecom and Russian businessman Grigory Berezkin, who own the developer of the Russian mobile OS Aurora, based on the Finnish Sailfish, may help China's Huawei, which has lost access to Android operating system updates due to American bans. Before the St. Petersburg forum, Huawei CEO Guo Ping discussed with Minister of Digital Development and Communications Konstantin Noskov the possible transition of Chinese smartphones to Sailfish, two sources familiar with the negotiations told The Bell. This topic was also raised at meetings between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, another source said.

What was discussed. According to a federal official, negotiations are proceeding in two directions.

• The first is the installation of the Aurora operating system (the Russian version of the Finnish Sailfish) on various types of devices from the Chinese company. It can be installed on Huawei devices instead of Google's Android system, which the Chinese company cannot fully use after the American bans. "China is already testing devices with Aurora pre-installed," the source told The Bell.
• The second is localization of production in Russia of some Huawei devices. We are talking about the possible deployment of joint production of chips and software.

Rostelecom's press service told The Bell that they had not heard about the negotiations, but were ready to work with all mobile solution developers. Huawei declined to comment.

What is this Russian OS? The Sailfish operating system has been developed since 2012 by the Finnish company Jolla, created by people from Nokia. In 2014, Russian billionaire Grigory Berezkin became a co-owner of Jolla through his ESN group, having reached an agreement with the Ministry of Communications to create a Russian national mobile OS based on Sailfish. Since 2016, the Open Mobile Platform company associated with Berezkin has been developing the Russian version of the system.

• In 2016, Berezkin told Vedomosti that his company was developing an operating system not for officials and government agencies, but for “ordinary users.” But since then, mass-market smartphones on Sailfish have not appeared in Russia. The only smartphone on Sailfish that is sold at retail is the R7, assembled in China by order of the Russian company Inoi, released in the spring of 2017. The industrial smartphone “Ermak,” developed by OMP, also runs on Sailfish.
• In May 2018, Rostelecom bought 75% of OMP from Berezkin. After that, it became known that officials, employees of state companies and public sector employees would be massively transferred to phones with the Russian operating system. Providing 8 million users with phones with Sailfish was estimated at 160 billion rubles. In May 2018, Rostelecom renamed the Russian version of the OS to Aurora.

Rostelecom instead of Google. Huawei urgently needed an alternative operating system after the Chinese company was blacklisted by the US Department of Commerce. After that, Google, along with other American companies, stopped working with Huawei, refusing to support the Android operating system, which all Huawei smartphones outside of China run on. After the next Android update, Huawei smartphone owners will lose access to all Google applications: Gmail, Chrome browser, YouTube and the Play Market app store.

• Huawei itself stated that these bans will not affect the company's already released devices, which will continue to run the Play Store and Google services, meaning that smartphones can be updated. In addition, Huawei will be able to use an open version of Android, so the next Huawei smartphones outside of China will be released on this version of the OS.
• The Chinese company prepared for the bans in advance. Back in the spring of 2018, it announced that it was developing its own mobile operating system to replace Android. In March 2019, Huawei CEO Richard Yu said that Huawei's own OS was already ready, but the dates for the start of its actual use were different - from autumn 2019 to the second quarter of 2020.