Microsoft, the king of desktop operating systems, haven’t had much luck with the mobile operating systems. It’s Windows-based mobile operating systems Windows Mobile and Windows Phone, both failed miserably and have been discontinued.

But that hasn’t deterred Microsoft from trying its hands in the lucrative mobile market again.

Microsoft’s yet another attempt on mobile OS

The unconfirmed news is that Microsoft is creating a Linux-based mobile operating system with a special focus on protecting users’ privacy.

We have put special attention on user privacy. There will be no data collection through Cortana. The OS will not be updated without user permission and above all, the updates won’t require you to restart your system several times. That itself is our biggest achievement till date. Don Jhoe, Microsoft Product Manager

Reports are not confirmed but the project is internally called “Mazure”. The name could be changed as the project progresses.

The Mazure OS will be completely open source. This shows the firm commitment to open source development from Microsoft. This is another effort from Microsoft to give back to the community by open sourcing essential tools like Windows calculator app.

Targeting 4 billion strong mobile OS market

There are over 4 billion mobile devices in the world. A tech-giant like Microsoft cannot simply give up on this big a market.

The world of mobile operating systems is dominated by Android and iOS and many experts think that it is saturated and a new player doesn’t stand a chance.

But Linux-based KaiOS came into the market in 2017 and created a niche for itself in just one year.

This moderate success of KaiOS perhaps gave Microsoft the idea to launch its own mobile operating system based on Linux.

Lately, a number of open source mobile operating system projects have come up. Almost all of them use Linux kernel underneath.

Linux-based smartphones are also a hot-topic in tech world. Librem5 and Necuno have already announced Linux-based smartphones with focus on privacy.

Microsoft has taken the same idea and started its own Linux-based mobile OS “Mazure” with a promise to protect user’s privacy.

You can find more information about this project on its extremely confidential website below.