Mobile OS - The need of the hour!
India has taken its first step towards the chip manufacturing with mobile as the first target device. While we relish the fact that we are one step closer, we totally ignore the other side of the coin. That is, the mobile Operating System. Are we really self sufficient in Mobile manufacturing when we have to depend on Google for its OS?
Chip 2025
India has taken its first step towards the chip manufacturing with mobile as the first target device. Behemoths like Tata and Mahindra have jumped into the fray to kick start the chip design and manufacture. If anyone can make that happen, it is the big industrial houses of India. However, given the complexity, the R&D involved and the lack of technology availability in India, we're at least a decade away from self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, better late than never.
We hope that these conglomerates invest heavily on R&D esp. in RISC-V architecture which is the open source hardware platform. Intel, AMD and Qualcomm are closed source so we'll incur high royalty/product costs. While ARM is open source, it is still only licensed for use. If India needs self sufficiency, they will need to develop their own architecture or adopt and develop platforms like RISC-V so we can keep the product costs very low and make the technology accessible to the poorest of the poor. In contrast, India could also try to bid and buy ARM as Softbank has been trying to sell that for a while now though the price will be quite high as it is the largest chip company but it is still worth to purchase since we could save decades on R&D on the new chip.
While we relish the fact that we are one step closer to the chip manufacturing, we totally ignore the other side of the coin. That is, the mobile Operating System. Apple has full control over the iOS and is not going to license the same to any Indian manufacturer. Which means we are left with the only choice, the Android.
Android is a good and capable OS, no doubt about it. And the fact that Google backs it, it will stay a very long time. That said, the fact that Google wields full control over it is also a big issue. Though it is open source, all the good stuff comes from Google's proprietary code and that is increasing every day. Is that really an issue?
Consider this. Google banned Huawei from using Android during the US war against Chinese companies. This meant that Huawei had manufactured costly bricks that no one wants. They lost their entire market overnight. That also pushed Huawei behind by 3-5 years. They had to start from scratch and pushed to develop Harmony OS, a hybrid of Linux and AOSP (Android Open Source Project - which will not have any proprietary code licensed by Google). If Google can do that to Huawei or China, they can do to Tata or India as well.
There is another big threat looming around with Google's Android. That's data security. Given close to 1.4B population of India and the targeted exponential growth in the next couple of decades, the problem will only grow at those exponential levels. It is an existential threat that Google collects any and all data through every phone that has Android installed. No amount of Government pressure or enacting laws will be any good to mitigate this threat. And Google decides the security levels, Government will need to request them every time for data esp. in cases where national security is involved.
Is there a way we can address this problem? Of course! The only way is to attain self sufficiency in the mobile ecosystem. Just like what Apple does. India needs to own every piece of the ecosystem whether hardware or software. Which would mean India should develop their own Mobile OS. It may seem like a mammoth task but it is not actually so, given the IT behemoth that India is and that the Indians constitute most of the core development teams even in Apple and Google. All it takes is a dedicated team that would work and create this Mobile OS.
Should we utilize AOSP given that it is open source? Yes and No. The suggestion would be to follow something similar to Huawei's HarmonyOS. Take the mainstream Linux kernel and create the OS from that. Then add the Android compatibility layer so people can leverage the vast app ecosystem of Android. Google has done a similar approach with their ChromeOS. Given the fact that Android was also a Linux project (though it has moved away so far, that it now has to be classified as a separate project), it is easy to build something on similar lines. Keeping the project to mainstream Linux kernel would also facilitate to extend the same OS to other devices like tablets and PCs, thus creating a completely India-centric ecosystem. This is what Apple does with their iOS/MacOS.
Creating an Operating System to work in sync with the hardware that we manufacture would create a complimenting ecosystem that is harmonious, works well and have full control over our data than being sold to Google or Apple. This would also make India self-sufficient in both hardware and software, with end-to-end capabilities while facilitating India to push its policies to every corner of the nation without any external interference.
