Russia will pay developers to use something other than Android or iOS

While there are a handful of mobile operating systems out there only two of them really matter: Android and iOS. All of the other options are very, very distant thirds, fourths, fifths, and so on. This is something that the Russian government hopes to change, due in large part to the fact that both operating systems are American made, by paying developers to use other options like Samsung’s Tizen or Jolla’s Sailfish OS. 

The U.S. mobile ecosystem duopoly has been the big story of tech for the past six-plus years. And continues to be mobile’s unshakeable reality — with Android and iOS collectively cutting themselves a 96 per cent share of the device market (per Gartner figures for Q3 2014). Not everyone is happy about this lack of geopolitical diversity in the mobile space, though. Russia for one wants to see less U.S.-centricity, at least domestically — and is apparently willing to dip into its pockets to encourage developers to migrate apps to other mobile platforms. Specifically Russia wants to support the Samsung-led Tizen open source effort, and also Jolla’s Sailfish OS — which has been developed in Europe (Finland), and is an extension of the open source MeeGo project (although notably Sailfish is not (yet) itself open sourced).