China Wrestles Android for Smartphone Control

[amoy]

China Wrestles Android for Smartphone Control — TheTelecomBlog.com

While the purpose of the white paper was to expose Google's growing control of China's smartphone industry, the underlying moral of the story is that the country's MIIT is confident China can go it alone, having the resources and wherewithal to create its own mobile OS and loosen Android's grip on its industry.

Such backlash against capitalist companies is really nothing new forChina, particularly when foreign American brands threaten domestic communist controlled business. "In China, regulators regulate regularly especially where they can position the regulations as helping out domestic companies," Duncan Clark, chairman of technology consultancy BDA, said in an email to Reuters.

As mentioned, the white paper went on to accuse Google of using its market dominance—Android devices account for 90 percent of the Chinese smartphone market—to gain unfair advantage over home-grown competition, stating that the company has discriminated against local firms by withholding codes and by using its various commercial partnerships to stifle development of mobile devices.

The great irony in all this, however, is that Android's success has laid the foundation for the growth of the entire Chinese smartphone market, Clark explains, as previously domestic companies had struggled to gain traction in China's smartphone market due to weaknesses in software and operating systems. In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to credit Android for creating the smartphone market China has today, the one its fighting to get Android out of.

Again, while no specific recommendations or restrictions were offered in the official white paper release, many analysts posit that this is simply the first step in increasing regulations against Google and its Android OS, regulations the regime likely hopes will curb Android's dominance, much like restrictions against Google's search engine were able to cut the company's search market share in half back in 2010.

also an interesting read of China and US accuse each other more than Cyberattacks - Mobile CLUB

 

[Known_Unknown]

I can't see Chinese designed and branded mobile OS's or phones having much impact in the rest of the world. The main problem is language, but also consumers see Chinese brands as being unknown and of often poor quality. Taiwanese brands like HTC and Asus have done very well for themselves but only after consistently performing at their best for many years in a row.

The only Chinese company that has succeeded somewhat in the telecommunications space is Huawei, but they haven't made much impact with their phones either.

 

[amoy]

HTC , Asus, mentioned or Samsung are mainly of hardware.

What's expected is an OS competitor to Apple, Android and Windows, not necessarily emerging from China though.