The Chinese tech giant, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., has remained in the headlines throughout 2019. After being initiated into the Entity List in May and subsequently launching its own operating system—HarmonyOS—at the start of this month as a potential surrogate for Android, the company is now considering the installation of the Russian operating system Aurora on 360,000 tablets by August next year (via Reuters).
On paper, the reason for installing Aurora on the tablets is for carrying out Russia"s population consensus in 2020. A Huawei spokesperson confirmed that the company is currently holding talks with the Russian Ministry of Communications. Two sources at Reuters specified, "Huawei is interested in the project. It showed samples of tablets that could be used," and, "This is a pilot project. We see it as the first stage of launching the Russian OS on Huawei devices."
Rostelecom, Russia"s leading long-distance telecommunications provider, owns Aurora and is the only contractor dealing with the tablets tasked for gathering the data for the consensus next year. The telecommunications operator wrote:
Various options for collaboration with Huawei are currently being considered with participation of the Ministry of Communications... We don’t disclose details yet, there is an agreement on confidentiality.
While the Shenzhen based company has been given some leeway in the previous months by the United States and is expected to get another 90 days to buy from US suppliers, the company is still not sailing in safe waters. Huawei knows that too, and the company"s founder, Ren Zhengfei, intends on a three to five years long overhaul of the entire company to put up an invincible army that is "capable of achieving victory". How propitious these steps will prove to be for the tech giant, remains to be seen.