There has been an ongoing buzz around Huawei for the last few weeks. As you may have heard, due to the U.S. adding Huawei to its Entity List, many companies have had to cancel their business relationships with Huawei. This has resulted in Google pulling Huawei's Android license, ARM suspending support, and other partners pulling out of deals with the company. In response, Huawei has accelerated the development of its in-house mobile operating system, and is also pursuing other options should the U.S. and China fail to strike a deal.

Rather than develop its own operating system from scratch, Huawei may be looking into whether they can work with an existing mobile OS. Of course, there aren't that many options out there, but Russian publication The Bell reports that Huawei is exploring Aurora OS as its alternative to Android. The publication cites two sources who report that Huawei executive Guo Ping discussed using Aurora OS with Konstantin Noskov, the Minister of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media of the Russian Federation. Both Huawei and Rostelecom, a state-run digital services provider, declined to comment to The Bell. The Bell is a fairly new Russian publication, but it was founded and operated by famous Russian journalist Yelizaveta Osetinskaya, giving this report some credibility.

Aurora OS is a Russian-made mobile operating system based on the open-source Sailfish OS Linux distribution developed by Finnish company Jolla. Sailfish isn't the most popular mobile operating system out there; in fact, it doesn't show up on the radar of Android versus iOS. However, its focus on privacy and security has won over many users.

According to The Bell, Huawei is already testing Aurora on a few of its devices. Switching to a non-Android OS would be a risky move, though, considering how important app support is for the average consumer. That's why we're seeing Huawei reach out to app developers to publish on its AppGallery app store, and why the company is exploring Aptoide as a Play Store alternative. Completely foregoing Android is likely a last resort for the company.


Source: The Bell