Even though Android is by far the most widely used mobile operating system in China, HTC thinks that it can break through in the Chinese mobile market by ditching Android in favor of its own homemade mobile platform. The Wall Street Journal reports that HTC is working with the Chinese government to create a new mobile platform that’s targeted directly at Chinese consumers and that “involves deep integration with Chinese apps like the Twitter-like microblog Weibo” and that will launch by the end of 2013.
The Journal says that China is eager to have an alternative to mobile platforms developed by American companies Google and Apple, which have both gotten into spats with the government over the past few years. It’s not clear yet whether the HTC operating system will be built entirely from scratch or whether it will be based on Android but heavily modified to suit the Chinese government’s demands.
Although the upcoming HTC platform faces unclear prospects for success, it does seem to be a marginally more sensible strategy than building yet another Facebook phone.
