Nikolay Nikiforov, the Russian minister of communications, has met with the management of the company Sailfish Holding. Participants of the meeting discussed the opportunity to use the Sailfish mobile OS, developed in neighbouring Finland, in the state and private sectors in Russia. They also looked at opportunities to set up an international industrial consortium for the development of alternative software products based on the Sailfish software. The programme would be carried out in cooperation with IT companies based in the BRICS states.
Russia already has its own home-grown internet search engine, Yandex, which dominates the local market, as well as its own social network, Vkontakte. The Russian government's attempt to support an alternative mobile operating system follows the opening of a competition investigation in Russia earlier this year against Google. Yandex filed a complaint against Google for alleged abuse of its dominant position with the Android OS, claiming Google restricts the applications available on Android phones.
