Rostelecom wants to buy Sailfish OS, the Russian alternative to Android

    Sailfish OS is an operating system for open source smartphones on the Linux kernel. Made by the Finnish company Jolla as the development of the project MeeGo. In 2016, the Russian players became actively interested in the project and a project of domestic localization of Sailfish Mobile OS Rus was created as a replacement for foreign operating systems Android and iOS.

    Import substitution allows you to make good money on state tenders, so this area attracts many investors. RBC has learned that Rostelecom filed with the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) an application to purchase 75% of the shares in the companies Open Mobile Platform and Votron of entrepreneur and media mogul Gregory Berezkina . These companies are engaged in the development of Sailfish Mobile OS Rus.

    Sailfish Mobile OS Rus is the only mobile operating system that is included in the Unified Register of Russian software. Government agencies are required to purchase software from this directory as a priority.

    In June 2015, a consortium of Jolla companies, energy holding ESN, software company ZAO ESK and Yandex with the project Mobile Platform with Russian Services and Independent OS won the competition of the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation on import substitution of the mobile OS. The second participant of the competition was the Research Institute SOKB with OS Tizen. On June 3, 2016, the Russian version of Sailfish Mobile OS Rus is included in the Unified Register of Russian Programs.

    Finally, in April 2016, the Open Mobile Platform company (WMD) was formed from the open components of Sailfish OS specifically for the development of Sailfish Mobile OS RUS. The owner of the company is Open Mobile Platform LLC - Development Center (Moscow), which is owned by Olga Berezkina and Vladimir Verozub.

    Votron LLC is 100% owned by Rusintech, whose owners are Grigory Berezkin and Mikhail Verozub.

    Now Votron owns a majority stake in Jolla. Thus, Sailfish OS can be considered the Russian operating system for smartphones, and all the above-mentioned persons will become the beneficiaries in the event of a possible deal with Rostelecom.

    The information on the request for a deal from Rostelecom was confirmed by the FAS representative, so the information can be considered almost official, although representatives of all participating companies prefer not to comment on this information.

    Owners of Sailfish Mobile OS Rus already earn good money on public procurement in Russia. For example, since 2017, Russian Post has been introducing mobile fiscal registrars and mobile post-cash terminals on the Sailfish Mobile OS Rus platform. At the moment, there are 15,000 smartphones being delivered to Sailfish with pre-installed applications that allow you to accept payments for utility services, communication services, insurance, pay for loans, etc. at home with customers. The contract amount - 171.1 million rubles.

    In the future, all Russian entrepreneurs may be allowed to use not only standard cash registers, but also mobile online cash registers for printing checks. Of course, they should work only on the Russian OS.

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