STC IT Rosa is working on an operating system for mobile devices, which may become the second Russian product in this class. Despite the great demand for domestic software, experts evaluate the project cautiously
Two sources in the market told RBC that they are developing a mobile operating system (OS) at STC IT Rosa. According to one of the interlocutors, the product can be presented at the Army-2022 forum in August. Oleg Karpitsky, CEO of STC IT Rosa, confirmed that the company is developing a solution for mobile devices. We plan to present the result to the market in the near future. Then we will be ready to talk about the details, he added, declining to comment further.
What is known about the developer
STC IT Rosa, according to SPARK, belongs to Alternative Capital LLC Leonid Reiman, who from 1999 to 2008 was first the head of the State Telecommunications Committee, and after its transformation into the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies (now the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications) headed it. In 2008-2010, Reiman was an adviser to President Dmitry Medvedev, after which he left to do business. STC IT Rosa was created in the same year 2010 on the basis of the integrator of free software Pingwin Software and the French Linux developer Mandriva. Until now, she has specialized in creating Linux-based operating systems for servers and desktop computers. A number of its products are included in the register of Russian software. It is this list that government agencies should focus on when public procurement, giving preference to the programs included in it.
At the end of 2014, STC IT Rosa registered the rights to the Rosa Mobile computer program. As Vladimir Rubanov, who held the positions of president and chief designer of the company at that time, explained to RBC, they had been developing a mobile version since 2011. Working prototypes with a new architecture for that time were successfully made. But in 2014, they were suspended due to a change in strategy. Whether the current developments are a continuation of previous developments, I do not know, Rubanov said.
What are the prospects for Russian OS
At the moment, only one OS for mobile devices is included in the register of Russian software — Aurora, which is being developed by the Open Mobile Platform company. Kaspersky Lab is also working on creating an OS for a smartphone, the companys founder Evgeny Kaspersky said in early June. So far, the registry of Russian software from this company includes Kaspersky Ios, an operating system for embedded systems with special cybersecurity requirements connected to the Internet.
According to the creator of LiveInternet, Herman Klimenko, it is important that the OS is created for a specific mobile device. You cant take a ready—made smartphone, demolish Android or iOS and install a conditional Aurora, the smartphone must initially be independent of the existing OS, Klimenko explained.
According to his version, it is expensive to create a fundamentally new OS: in Russia there are no necessary resources for this — programmers, hardware. At the same time, Klimenko recalled that today there are two main operating systems, and all alternatives, including Huaweis own OS, are somehow made on the basis of Android. There is no point in developing [a mobile operating system in Russia] from scratch. The goal, rather, is to make the device secure. If it is impossible to demolish the existing OS, you can run your solution on top, he argues.
The potential of the new mobile OS is zero, in turn, the director of the Institute for Internet Research Karen Ghazaryan is categorical. With the exception of the ill-fated tablets that were purchased for the population census (conducted in 2020. — RBC), other mass devices on the Russian OS Aurora did not appear. If earlier it was possible to hope for some kind of production, now it is difficult to believe in this project, as in any other - it is problematic to physically produce mobile devices in Russia, and now it is almost impossible abroad, Kazaryan said.
After the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, a number of countries imposed sanctions against Russia, including the United States, and severely restricted high-tech exports. In particular, it is prohibited to supply chips, servers and other products to the country, the creation of which used technologies patented by American companies. In particular, because of this, Taiwans TSMC, the worlds largest microelectronics manufacturer, refused to cooperate with Russian companies.
Nikolay Komlev, Executive Director of the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises (APKIT), assesses the prospects of the Russian mobile OS cautiously. It is certainly needed to replace foreign operating systems in government agencies, and the products of STC IT Rosa are generally working and original. But since Russia is now cut off from hardware, it will be difficult for such a system to enter the consumer market, much less the global one, and without this it will not be able to become commercially successful, he argues.