The Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS) and Shanghai Liantong have developed a Linux-based new smartphone operating system. Dubbed as the China Operating System (COS), it is the country’s second move for a home-grown smartphone platform. COS has the advantage of being government backed, which in China means that local app developers will come under ever so subtle pressure to port their apps to the new platform. One area of where the OS may gain traction over Android is that apps will have to go through an Apple-style validation process and can only be sold on the official app store. That may reassure Chinese consumers in a market where Android apps are often pirated and infected with malware.