PRESS: Russian firm to offer devices on upgraded Sailfish OS soon

MOSCOW, May 10 (PRIME) -- Russian company Open Mobile Platform, indirectly controlled by Grigory Beryozkin, founder of power holding ESN, will design a domestic mobile operating system, based on Sailfish, to compete with Google’s Android on the market of low-cost mobile devices, business daily Vedomosti reported Tuesday.

The operating system is not aimed at the state sector, but at mass market, Beryozkin said. First Sailfish-run devices will appear in the country within the next several months, he said.

Sailfish smartphones will be accessible by price and will not compete with top notch devices, Beryozkin said.

Earlier in May, Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said in his Twitter account that a center for the development of the domestic mobile operating system had been launched in high-tech city Innopolis in the republic of Tatarstan. It will be a global operating system, whose major part will be developed in the country.

The new system is not created from the very beginning: Beryozkin earlier acquired Finnish firm Jolla, set up by Nokia’s former employees. Jolla designs own smartphones and tablets on the Sailfish basis.

Programmers from Innopolis will upgrade Sailfish to satisfy needs of Russian users, including the translation of the interface into Russian and addition of popular applications. No significant modifications in the security sphere are on the agenda, Beryozkin said.

According to the ministry’s import substitution plan, the share of foreign client and mobile operating systems on the Russian market should decrease to 75% by 2020 and 50% by 2025 from the current 95%.

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