China Unicom Hedges OS Bets With Ubuntu Support

Chinese operators' support vital for new platforms as huge country looks for alternative to Android

At least the wave of new mobile operating systems, set to appear on commercial devices over the next few months, is making the market more interesting, and potentially even disrupting the Android/iOS axis. Mozilla's Firefox Mobile is leading the field in terms of profile and carrier support, but this week Ubuntu and Tizen, also Linux/browser-based OSs, are picking up momentum too.

China Unicom has pledged its support to the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group, formed last month by the Linux distribution's controller Canonical. This is interesting, as China is seen as the most promising market for a non-Android mobile Linux to gain real scale, given the country's difficult relationships with Google. [...]