Reuters: Huawei discusses using Sailfish-based Aurora OS on tablets

Reuters published a report about Huawei starting talks with Russia to install the Sailfish-based Aurora OS on Huawei tablets that will be used to conduct Russia’s population census in 2020.

Aurora OS is a mobile operating system owned in majority by Russia’s state telecom Rostelecom and is based on Jolla’s Sailfish OS, that originated from the ashes of Nokia’s and Intel’s MeeGo OS. With the troubles Huawei is having with the United States, that might lead to the company being cut off from Android, Huawei is looking for alternative operating systems for their devices, including their own Harmony OS, but also Russia’s Aurora OS.

Huawei is discussing to install Aurora OS on 360,000 tablets by August 2020. This is supposed to be a pilot project for Aurora OS on Huawei devices, according to Reuters’ sources. Based on the success of this collaboration, Huawei might expand the usage of Aurora on other devices. It’s also a question how Harmony OS will fit in the whole story.

Of course, Huawei still primarily uses Android OS on smartphones and that will most likely remain so. There is a real risk of the company being cut off from Android, so making back-up plans is the right thing to do.