We recently learned by way of a Flurry report that China had overtaken the US in terms of the total number of active Android and iOS devices. While that is a claim that the US will never be able to recapture, that is another story. To the point here, it seems that the research arm of China’s Ministry of Industry may not be all that excited about the widespread adoption of Android within the country.
Back in November of 2012 Android was claiming a 90 percent share of the Chinese smartphone market and even if that number has dropped a bit since, it is clear to see that Android is very popular within China. This goes back to the research arm of China’s Ministry of Industry. It seems they have recently released a whitepaper on this very subject. According to details coming from the report, they now feel that their “country’s mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android.”
The paper acknowledges that Android is open-source, however it also notes concern in that “the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google.” The interesting part here, while the paper seems to be pretty clear in terms of the stance against Android, it did not offer any suggestions otherwise. Reuters notes that the “ministry did not recommend any specific policies, regulatory actions or other measures.”
On the flip side though, the paper did offer praise to several Chinese companies that have created their own systems. Otherwise, while Android remains dominant in China, Google’s search market share has continued to drop. This goes back to 2010 when Google partially pulled out of the search market in China. Since then the market share has dropped from about 30 percent to about 15 percent as of the end of 2012.
[via SlashGear]
。。。。