百度易 : Baidu Yi — Android or not Android?
Thursday, 8th September, 2011
There’s been various gossip around the web this past week about Baidu’s forthcoming mobile operating system, 易 (yì, easy).
- Reuters wrote that Baidu Yi is “modelled” on Android.
- 山寨机 (Shānzhài Jī, cottage machine or kind of home made) wrote about its compatibility with Android.
- The English-language rumour mill says Yi is built on / based on / a fork of Android.
Without a decent grasp of Chinese, it’s quite difficult to get beyond the chatter. 搜狐IT (Sōuhú IT) has a couple of articles from the 6th September:
- 百度易手机11月上市 戴尔负责硬件制造 (Baidu Yi mobile phone, devices from Dell, coming in November): quotes Baidu CEO on the importance of compatibility with Android (百度CEO李彦宏在接受搜狐IT采访时 … 百度•易“刚开始做,需要兼容现有流行的操作系统——Android系统”。).
- 外媒解读百度易:剥离安卓应用 封装自己的服务 (Foreign media interpretation of Baidu Yi: Android with Baidu applications): has a passage mentioning Yi as a fork of Android, but the paragraph does start with “allegedly” (据称,实际上在中国销售的部分安卓手机上,百度的网络服务开始取代谷歌的服务,不过百度此次将更加深入,将在安卓操作系统基础之上推出一个独立的分支。).