VK, Yandex, Sberbank, Rostelecom to join forces to develop new mobile OS - paper

MOSCOW. Dec 30 (Interfax) - VK , Yandex , Sberbank and Rostelecom plan to form a company to develop a mobile operating system based on Android open source code and a platform for mobile services that are compatible with it, national daily Kommersant said on Friday, citing sources.

The new OS will be aimed at the consumer market and the services are supposed to replace Google Mobile Services, a collection of popular apps and APIs for Android devices.

VK, Yandex and Rostelecom declined to comment, while Sberbank and the Digital Development Ministry did not respond to questions, the paper said.

There is no formal consortium yet, but the companies are prepared to join forces to develop the platform so their apps can function properly, one of the paper's sources said.

The development of the new OS does not conflict with Rostelecom's plans to develop an ecosystem around the Aurora OS, which will be used in the corporate and state sectors.

Launching a mobile services platform for an Android-based OS will be cheaper than for the Aurora OS, the sources said. On one hand, most apps from Russian developers are already tailored for Android, and on the other VK already launched the RuStore app store this year. The development of the Android-based OS is expected to take one year at most.