China OS demoed on HTC hardware; an ambitious Android clone

Concerned with growing security threats and surveillance in the Western World, China has announced its very own operating system aimed at providing a very localized and secure experience to the world's largest mobile market.

Liantong, a company founded in co-operation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed the China OS (COS) for multiple devices such as smartphones, tablets, television set-top boxes and other household appliances. According to the company, China needs to move away from the monopoly of foreign operating systems developed by Microsoft, Google and Apple which are known to contain security vulnerabilities and are often targets of hacking attacks.

The company also feels that it is tough to rely on foreign software companies due to incidents such as Microsoft pulling the plug on Windows XP support, although the operating system is used by majority of users in China including the Government, and the latest revelations about PRISM surveillance using backdoors.

Liantong have announced that China OS will be a proprietary operating system capable of running high performance native apps, HTML5 and an optional Java Virtual Machine on devices that may need it. The OS is expected to run 100,000 apps at launch. Liantong is currently seeking partnerships from local Android manufacturers such as Huawei and Lenovo along with support from carriers to develop an ecosystem for COS.

Engadget posted some photos of the operating system in its current form running on the HTC One and Butterfly. HTC was previously reported to be working on a China-specific OS but has denied to comment on its involvement with the China OS project.

Source: China-COS (Chinese) | Images via Engadget