Reuters: Russia may buy 360,000 tablets with Russian Aurora OS from Huawei for population census

Russian authorities are negotiating the installation of the Russian operating system " Aurora " on tablets from the Chinese company Huawei in order to use them for the Russian population census in October 2020, Reuters reports, citing sources.

Aurora is proposed to be installed on 360 thousand Huawei tablets by August 1, 2020. One source called this “the first stage of the implementation of the Russian OS on Huawei devices.”

Huawei confirmed that it is negotiating with the Russian Ministry of Communications. The department itself did not comment on this. Rostelecom, which owns Aurora, officially reported that they are discussing issues of Huawei's interaction with the Ministry of Communications. The company noted that they are considering various options for cooperation.

In early August, Rostelecom became the sole purchaser of tablets with a Russian operating system for the population census. The company announced that it would select a supplier of tablets in the fall of 2019.

• The US Commerce Department blacklisted Huawei in May, barring the company from doing business with US firms without government approval. The restrictions reportedly will leave new Huawei phones without Google products and prevent users from installing Android updates.
• In July, Vedomosti reported that Rostelecom and the Ministry of Communications proposed to supply 1.4 million federal officials with devices running the Russian operating system Aurora.