“South Korea will seek to develop a new, open-source operating system for mobile phones that will help secure local smartphone makers’ future competitiveness against their global rivals such as Apple Inc., a government official said Monday,” Yonhap reports.
“The move comes shortly after Google Inc. announced its purchase of Motorola Mobility, a hardware company that makes phones based on Google’s Android operating system,” Yonhap reports. “The deal poses challenges to South Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics Co., which makes Android-running smartphones.”
Yonhap reports, “Kim Jae-hong, a deputy minister from the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, said… that Google, with its newly acquired ability to produce smartphones, could become one of the largest competitors for South Korean handset producers in the future… The government will launch a project before the end of the year to allow the country’s phone makers to jointly develop their own open-source mobile operating system, as well as a Web-based operating system.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Attribution: MacNN. Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Google say goodbye to your largest Android phone partner.
The Korean word for “develop” is the same as “steal” or “copy”.
They do not need to any new copies. Samsung already has BadaOS.
So Korean government probably just seeks way to take people’s money and spend it via corrupted scheme.
It will be called Hyundroid.
NoKia?
So let me get this straight… the South Korean GOVERNMENT is going to develop an open-source smartphone OS? For whose interest? Samsung is (obviously) against this, so who does it really benefit??
look at this another way… Smartphone sales are important to the Korean economy, and therefore to all Koreans. The Korean government sees two major threats: apple’s legal challenge may knock android out of the market; and the Google purchase of motorolla may make samsung uncompetitive. By facilitating a new operating system, the Korean government is attempting to replace android with an operating system which is immune from apple patent challenges, and manipulation by google. Samsung, and others, will be able to use this operating system for free.
Well, I think that is the idea anyway. But building an o/s is not so easy unless, like google and samsung, you steal the ideas of others.
With all the pre-existing smartphone OSs, it will be very difficult to create a new one which is immune from patent challenges.
Off the top of my head there’s LG as well.
Maybe Korea should buy webOS, and open-source it. Less risky than starting from scratch. If I had to guess, I’d say 9 out of 10 OS projects fizzle.
Still based on WebKit! Apple has a noose around their balls!
HahahahahahahHaHahaaaha!
Meanwhile, Samsung is looking into having their laptops made in Taiwan.
Yeah, easier said then done.
Either way Samsung/Google……….Apple=WINNING!
Best homegrown in the world, right here in the USA.
I call bullshit.
You can’t beat BC Bud.
U.S. grown Purple Indica, Diesel, Grapefruit, etc.
I rest my case, your honor.
Were those developed by Monsanto?
Actually the best is grown in the Ozarks in Missouri. No one even comes close.
It will look and work just like iOS 4. lol
iOS 2.
It will look and work just like Mac OS 7.
Windows 95.
hahaha
This should be interesting to watch: yet another mobile OS that probably will copy the iPhone and iOS — and violate Apple’s patents.
Homegrown, to be read as “copy/paste”
@FTB dead on. Just expect another blatant copy job. And a bad copy job at that. The government is ran by businesses anyway so Samsung is probably behind the idea. Koreans hate having to rely on outsiders for anything. They were just biding their time until they can copy it.
That didn’t take long.
The new world order – everything, all the time. Right out of Hotel California.
I rather presumed that the Asians were already well along with such a move in pcs as well as post pcs. Hardly suggests that they are perceptive when it comes to reading enormous writing on the wall even when its in neon letters does it.
A committee is putting together a horse. I wonder what we’ll get?
As usual, some hybrid equine like a jackass that takes after the committee members.
“South Korea will seek to develop a new, open-source operating system that will help secure Korean smartphone makers’ competitiveness against their global rivals such as, oh, I don’t know. Let’s say, … um, well, let’s just use … um, well, say, … um … just as an example, let’s say, AppleInc., for instance.”
But seriously, I mean, REALLY?!
A whole, national, government is required to try to compete with a private enterprise that succeeds simply by applying itself to quality, customer service, and innovation?!
And I’m also sitting here trying to remember the last time any national government felt it necessary to put its resources into trying to compete with Microsoft.
China, when it created its own Linux distribution to compete with Windows.
I just don’t think Asian companies or governments *get* software. I really don’t think they have one bit of a clue on how to develop a mass-market OS and then market it properly. This has always been the “Achille’s Heel” of all the Asian electronics giants. Ever see *any* good software from the likes of Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung, and LG?
The South Korean government will now develop this software? Considering that Samsung as a conglomerate accounts for 20% of the nation’s GDP, it seems Samsung is telling the government that they need to use the taxpayer’s dollars for the development of this software.
Do you all know that Samsung’s Chairman Lee Kun-Hee, who recently laid down an edict that they must develop their own software, is a tax-evading convict who was pardoned by the President because he means so much to the Korean economy? Samsung needs to be split into hundreds of smaller companies. Korea has let these conglomerates run out of control and the citizens there are paying dearly for it.
Pokemon.
By the time Korea gets a fully operational OS, smartphones will be obsolete.
Depends what you mean by Asian.
Most US software is developed in India.
no it isn’t. That’s just where the support centers have been outsourced. Software is still developed here in the states, for the most part.
Japan has made plenty of great software via nintendo and Sony. Os is there weakest point but only because they have chosen to focus on games.
Sounds Fine… but ALL EYES on the lookout for
the copy coders.
This will never see the light of day. No government can possibly develop anything commercially viable which any for-profit corporation, let alone several, would agree works well enough to put in its products.
Not only that, with the Korean (or any) government running the show, we’ll see a beta version about 2015 or so. Right about the time Windows Phone 8 comes out . . . .
They make their own high-speed trains too… they call it the KTX, which when translated, is TGV. XD
If the government is making it, I am sure it will be excellent and be something phone users will be excited about having on their new phones!
I see it more as a responce to Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access aka (TD-SCDMA China’s own mobile system – than a rebutal of American systems
Isn’t Android open source, at least the OS part is Linux based, and apps are Java based.
Now THAT would be funny. S. Korea forks the Android OS with own kimchi version, replacing all Google functionality.
I agree there will likely be plenty of blatant copying in any OS the Koreans come up with but there is an interesting twist here. If the Korean government owns the OS and open sources it who will you sue? The south Korean government? That should be interesting. Yes you could sue Samsung but they will still have the backing of their politicians. In S. Korea they will likely pass laws based on the common good to protect them and in this country they will likely try and wield political power to quell litigation and protect the Korean OS.
Not governmental, but subsidy nonetheless, Intel is offering laptop OEMs $300M to make a windoze laptop that looks like a MacBookAir.
So far the response from the OEMs has been to say that’s not enough.
i smell another fork of android coming
This new OS will have Diplomatic Immunity. Each boxed phone will carry a Diplomatic Pouch Status.
Absolutely insane. I doubt that even the South Koreans will take to that idea. If it’s even started, Android smartphones would lose an awful lot of users.
The real nightmare would be if the South Korean government played MONOPOLY tricks and forced their Cludge OS (Tm) on their populace. It’s been done before. Pity the result. 😳