It appears the world’s second largest economy is now looking to go head-to-head with tech giants Microsoft, Google and Apple. According to Mashable, the People’s Republic is currently in the process of developing their own Operating System spearheaded by the government.
Xinhua news agency reports the new Operating System is expected to make its debut sometime around October, later this year. The OS is reportedly a result of Microsoft ending their support for Windows XP and the government’s restrictions on Windows 8. It is expected to add another layer of security to their already impenetrable information network.
It appears China is going for the ‘if everyone can do it so can we’ approach. This is not the first time an attempt has been made to develop a native OS. Ten years ago Kylin, based on FreeBSD was released, with Ubuntu Kylin developed as a possible successor to the original about a year ago.
Mashable reports that 70% of desktop users in China are still using Windows XP. Hopefully the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the new OS will be similar to that of Windows XP so that users can make the transition more easily. Whether or not we’ll see an international release of this new Chinese OS has yet to be confirmed… But thanks to the proximity and warm relations we share with the People’s Republic, we have a feeling that we just might.
China is looking to establish complete technological autonomy, and catering to a local market nearly three times the size of Australia, is well on the way to doing so.
Baidu, a company that launched less than 15 years ago and serves as China’s equivalent of Google, is today one of the world’s biggest tech companies and boasts a 65% share of the Chinese market.