China's Tencent Launches Smart Hardware OS To Rival Alibaba

An anonymous reader writes: Chinese internet and media giant Tencent Holdings has today launched an operating system for mobile devices such as internet-connected phones, TVs, smartwatches and other IoT products. Tencent Operating System (OS) TOS+ is open to all developers and manufacturers free of charge should they agree to share their revenue – a framework similar to Google's popular Android mobile OS. The new Tencent OS offering, which provides voice recognition and mobile payment systems, will rival other home-grown operating systems looking to conquer the smart hardware arena with connected wearables, TVs and smart homeware technology. These competitors include smartphone maker Xiaomi and Asia's largest internet company Alibaba, who hopes to see its recently launched Yun OS eventually installed on tens of millions of smartphones. The Chinese systems for mobile and hardware products provide an alternative to Google's services, which constantly face challenges across the country due to strict censorship and licensing laws.

Comments

i think i'll wait

[Anonymous Coward]

for fiddycent OS.

Re:i think i'll wait

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a chink in your armor. I think he is eating rice.

Coming to North America?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the chance of these devices and software ending up in North American markets?

Re:Coming to North America?

[bmo]

Probably very good.

We don't make anything here anymore. And we have forgotten how.

--
BMO

Re:Coming to North America?

[omnichad]

Why does China use American computer chips in its super computers?

Citation? I Think you have your facts wrong

Re:Coming to North America?

[Bacon Bits]

Er... Tinahe-2 uses Xeon processors and Xeon Phi coprocessors.

Re:Coming to North America?

[omnichad]

Oops....well, the frontend uses Chinese-built CPUs...

Re:Coming to North America?

[bmo]

>stealing technology
>china is "guilty" of this "crime"

The entire Industrial Revolution in the States was because people stole "intellectual property" from England. Samuel Slater, and the rest of the gang up and down the Blackstone River got all their tech from England.

And it's hailed as an achievement here in the US.

Somehow it's bad when someone else does it.

>Calling the F35 good technology

No, no it is not. It is a boat anchor. A very very expensive boat anchor. It's the exact same thing that happened with the F111 at the demands of Robert McNamara but /worse/. A jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none-but-with-vtol and maintenance nightmares.

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BMO

Let's go

[tld-id]

we need go to China . :)

No Thank You

[Warhaven]

I mean, if I can avoid it, as "share revenue" really means, "sharing with China your company's trade secrets, code, prototype designs, and inside information via the backdoor passwords, sniffers, loggers, and whatever else is bundled with their new OS".

And it has NO system D!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like my next choice for an OS.

"Provides and alternative", indeed

[kheldan]

Probably logs everything you do with it and sends it directly to the government for analysis, and probably has censorship hardcoded right into it.

Someone else asked 'any chance of it being available in North America'; why would you want it? Aren't we surveilled enough here already? You want the Chinese government knowing everything you do with your mobile device? Are you nuts?

Re:"Provides and alternative", indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

A police state arises when your government knows what you say, do and where you are at any time so they can pick you up when they want to. A state that isn't the one you living in knowing the same is mostly inconsequential.

Free?

[doktor-hladnjak]

How is it "free of charge" if you have to share revenue? This summary reads like a press release.

Re:Free?

[gstoddart]

How is it "free of charge" if you have to share revenue?

No up front costs ... and if you don't develop for that platform and make money from it, you're giving up precisely NOTHING. If you do, you're giving up a cut.

This summary reads like a press release.

Of course it's a press release. The byline is "Alice MacGregor, CloserStill Media" -- my guess is CloserStill Media has skin in the game, or has been hired to promote this.

You aren't honestly expecting investigative journalism, are you?

These days, the majority of internet news articles are thinly disguised press releases, or syndicated stories which appear verbatim in a bunch of other sites.

how is this like Android?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Tencent Operating System (OS) TOS+ is open to all developers and manufacturers free of charge should they agree to share their revenue – a framework similar to Google's popular Android mobile

Android is free and open source. You don't have to share anything with Google if you don't want to. How is TOS+ anything like that? It doesn't seem to be open source.

Tron the open-source real-time operating system ..

[DougPaulson]

Microsoft could have owned mobile space way back in the 1980s if they had promoted the TRON real-time operating system, instead of joiing the TRON consortium and then acting to have it suppressed through the use of legislation in Washington.

"Microsoft's decision to join the T-Engine Forum is not without irony. The company was the main beneficiary of U.S. government actions against the TRON project in 1989" ref

Microsoft vs. Historical Fact

Tencent?

[Chris Mattern]

Man, we've got a rapper who could make *five* of those!

Avoid what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the part where you think you have an alternative other than exactly which nefarious government has full access to your trade secrets, code, prototype designs and inside information.