The future of China Mobile’s Ophone platform surprisingly appears to be in some doubt, just days after it was reported that the operator is set to establish an industry alliance to drive use of the OS. According to Marbridge Daily, Borqs, the design-house behind the OS, is set to more closely align future versions of the OS with Android, on which the platform is currently based, but with which it is largely incompatible. This will enable apps written for Android to be supported by Ophone, with China Mobile’s customisations added on top of the core OS. More surprisingly, APAC website Mobinode citied “insiders” at China Mobile who stated that Ophone is “dead,” and that the operator was also lukewarm to Android in its standard form, partially because of its experience with Ophone.
In many ways, it would make sense for China Mobile (and Borqs) to align Ophone and Android more closely, in order to exploit the global Android developer community. The company has recently described its app store activities as a “strategic pivot” in its value added services portfolio, and outlined plans to work with international developers to strengthen its content portfolio. A more complete move away from Ophone would be more surprising, especially as the platform appears to have gained some support among the vendor community – perhaps unsurprisingly, due to the size of the customer base that China Mobile can offer. It has also recently been reported that two evolutions of Ophone are planned for 2011, with the platform seen as key to driving smartphone adoption into China’s mass-market. The development of a custom platform has also been echoed by China Unicom, the market number-two.
Article via mobilebusinessbriefing
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