OREANDA-NEWS  VK, Yandex, Sberbank and Rostelecom PJSC plan to establish a company developing a mobile operating system based on the open source Android, as well as a platform of mobile services compatible with it, Kommersant reported, citing its own sources.

The new OS will be aimed at the consumer segment, and services will have to replace Google Mobile Services (popular applications and APIs for Android devices).

VK, Yandex and Rostelecom declined to comment to the newspaper, Sberbank and the Ministry of Finance did not respond to requests.

According to one of the sources, there is no formal consortium yet, but the companies are ready to unite to develop a platform "so that their applications have adequate functionality."

At the same time, the development of a new OS does not contradict Rostelecom's plans to develop an ecosystem based on the Aurora OS, which will be used in the corporate and public sectors.

It will be cheaper to launch a mobile services platform for Android OS than for Aurora OS, sources say: on the one hand, most applications of domestic developers are already adapted for Android, and on the other hand, VK has already launched the RuStore app store this year. At the same time, it will take no more than 1 year to develop an Android OS.