That the mobile industry is currently dominated by Western operating systems (e.g., Android, iOS, and Windows Phone) has made China worry. Its response? Develop a new platform called COS or China Operating System.

Built with the intention to weaken the US hold on the mobile market, the government-backed China Operating System is apparently more secure than Android and the iPhone. As reported by New York Times, COS is a “strategic product for national security,” something the country thinks is gravely needed amidst the U.S.’s unethical surveillance via its National Security Agency (NSA) and Microsoft ceasing support of its legacy Windows XP.

Another reason for developing the China Operating System is the seeming lack of acclimatization of non-native systems. Western-made design interfaces reportedly do not blend well with Chinese users and behavior. A lack of optimization is also reported in other mobile aspects: cloud service, speech recognition, input method, and more.

Though the China Operating System is claimed to be independently developed by Chinese researchers, this promotional video shows its similarities to Google’s Android OS. In its current form, COS is compatible with 100,000 applications, which is a mixture of Java apps and HTML games and websites.

[Source: New York Times]

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