New Chinese OS to compete with Android, iOS

A new Chinese-developed operating system is reportedly set to enter the market and compete with popular systems Android and iOS.

The OS, named China Operating System, or COS, has been developed by the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Shanghai Lian Tong Network Communication Technology Inc.

According to Chinadaily, COS includes applicability to a wide range of computer-based hardware and not just smartphones, and it is also touted to fix a range of existing programming bugs and errors.

Director of the institute, Li Minshu said that the release of COS aims to break the monopoly that foreign companies have on fundamental software, and to introduce an operating system with our own intellectual property rights.

Developer Wu Yanjun, said that COS differs from Android and iOS in three respects, its applicability to wide range of devices, including TV set-top boxes; it is not designed support various online application stores and that COS has fixed a lot of existing faults and more than 100 other bugs.

Wu said that with the existing vulnerabilities fixed, it is hard for hackers to remotely control a computer or smartphone running COS.