The Indian government and MeitY are planning to create an in-house operating system for smartphones, as reported by The Economic Times.
The government is working on a policy that will encourage the creation of an indigenous operating system for smartphones. It will compete against Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS that power majority of the smartphones in the market. The idea was revealed by the Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrashekhar in an interview with PTI.
Indian government considers developing an in-house smartphone OS
The Made-in-India OS will compete against Android and iOS
Currently, smartphones are dominated by Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems. Both companies are also driving the hardware ecosystem. In the interview, Chandrashekhar stated that there is no third OS in the mobile software space hence there is a tremendous interest in MeitY and the government of India to create a new operating system. The policy for this is currently under planning. The minister also added that the government is looking for capabilities within the start-up and academic ecosystem for developing the in-house indigenous operating system.
“If there is some real capability then we will be very much interested in developing that area because that will create an alternative to iOS and Android which then an Indian brand can grow,” Chandrasekhar said in the interview with PTI. He also reiterated that the government is relooking at the policies and policy tools in order to reimagine goals and ambition.
In the past, major OEMs including Samsung, BlackBerry and Microsoft have attempted to create their own OS and rival Android and iOS, however, all of them failed. It remains to be seen whether an Indian firm takes up the challenge of creating the indigenous OS and also how many brands will adopt it and ship devices based on the platform.