China takes on Android as Lenovo buys Motorola

摘要

The popularity of low-cost smart-phones has left Android with a significant market lead in China - estimated at 90% by IDC. In January, China's Academy of Sciences took the wraps off a homegrown mobile OS designed to take on Android's dominance. The Academy and commercial partner Liantong Network Communications Technology unveiled the China Operating System (COS), which they claim was built from the ground up in China, from the software to the drivers to the APIs. This claim was met with skepticism in western media, with Ars Technica asserting that the UI of the OS shares similarities with HTC's Sense interface, so the design may instead have been based on Android.