A white paper, authored by the research arm of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said Google’s Android has too much control over China’s smartphone industry and that China had the ability to create its own mobile operating system.
“Our country’s mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android,” the paper said. “While the Android system is open source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google.”
The paper said Google had discriminated against some Chinese companies developing their operating systems by delaying the sharing of codes. Google had also used commercial agreements to restrain the business development of mobile devices of these companies, it added.
A Google spokesman in China declined to comment, reports Reuters.
The ministry did not recommend any specific policies, regulatory actions or other measures.
The white paper lauded Chinese companies such as Baidu, Alibaba Group and Huawei for creating their own mobile operating systems. Huawei told Reuters that it is devoting resources to its own platform, which would lessen its dependence on other companies and provide it with an alternate plan if access to either Android or Windows Phone were somehow shut off.
The white paper could be a signal to the industry that regulations against Android are on the horizon. Huawei was the third largest global smartphone manufacturer, with 4.9 percent, according to Gartner’s 4Q report on 2012 sales, while ZTE nabbed fifth place with 4.3 percent. In 2012 overall, Huawei sold 27.2 million smartphones, up 73.8 percent from the year before, according to Gartner.
The top 10 mobile operators in the world – which serve about half the population on Earth – would likely welcome competition to the Android/Google juggernaut.
