In terms of smartphone platform market share, Android is dominating with Apple’s iOS taking second place. While that is certainly good news as far as Google is concerned, other stakeholders don’t seem too pleased about it and China is one of them. According to a report, it seems that the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology basically thinks that the country is a little too dependent on the Android operating system, at least more than they would like.
It should be noted that Android is an open source system and that smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, LG, Motorola and HTC were not forced into using it. However despite Android’s open source status, China believes that Android’s core technology and roadmap is strictly controlled by Google, and that this affects the development of China’s own mobile operating system which is currently “too dependent on Android”.
Reuters has even highlighted a situation last year between Acer and Alibaba where their plans were scrapped, supposedly due to pressure from Google not to proceed. If anything this just serves as evidence that Google might be holding a bit too much power to the extent where it can affect local businesses, such as Alibaba. What do you guys think? Is China right to be worried?