India Planning to Develop Smartphone Operating System To Compete with Android, iOS

Last Updated on January 26, 2022 by Anu Joy

On Monday, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar, announced that the government of India is working on a policy to create an “indigenous operating system” to take on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. He added that the government is looking towards start-ups and academia for mobile OS development capabilities.

There is no third one. Therefore, in a lot of ways there is tremendous interest in MeitY and in the Government of India to even create a new handset operating system. We are talking to people. We are looking at a policy for that.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT

Roadmap for India’s Home-Grown Operating System

Chandrasekhar, along with Minister for Communications and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw unveiled the second volume of Vision Document on Electronics Manufacturing prepared by ICEA. The industry body ICEA boasts of prominent companies such as Apple, Lava, Foxconn, and Dixon. The second volume of the document lays out a roadmap for India to scale up from $300 billion electronics manufacturing by 2026, from the present level of $75 billion.

This report is very precise which talks about where USD 300 billion will come, what industry has to do and what the government needs to do. This is an example of how industry and government should set targets for the country. The manufacturing will be USD 300 billion and exports worth USD 120 billion will happen. This is the government of India’s objective now.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT

India’s objective to develop a home-grown Operating System is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aim to boost the country’s tech industry. No further details pertaining to the new OS are available as of now. It will be interesting to see what the government of India comes up with, as long as it doesn’t call it the Indian OS or IOS, which could lead to some confusion.