Can China Develop a Successful Operating System

Reuters reported that China is developing a homegrown operating system.

This is not the first time they have done this. However this time, they have a much better chance;

1. China’s worries about the U.S. owning computing technology have largely been justified by the the revelations by Edward Snowden.
2. China now is much more powerful in the computing scene. They manufacture most of the world’s smartphones.
3. Chinese Internet companies have grown to the extent that they make a Google-less Internet a reality in China. Although they have yet to expand to other countries, China has demonstrated that they can develop viable alternatives to the most powerful Internet company.
4. The dominance of Microsoft Windows has waned. In China, the majority of PCs ran Windows but only pirated versions of Windows XP. Now that Microsoft has ended support for Windows XP, China’s PC OS situation is up for grabs. This is even more so given that China has recently banned Windows 8 for government use.
5. Although I don’t have hard data, it seems that the software industry in China is quite vibrant. There are many titles for both Android and iOS developed inside China. I suspect that there is quite a bit of software talent in China.

This time around, the Chinese OS seems to have a fair chance.

It’s obvious that this will be a Linux based system.