China's Huawei has begun talks with Russia about installing Russian operating system (OS) Aurora on 360,000 of its tablets to conduct Russia's population census next year, two sources told Reuters.

Huawei has been seeking alternative operating systems to Google's Android OS after Washington put the world's second-largest smartphone maker on a so-called Entity List that threatens to cut off its access to the essential U.S. components and technology.

"This is a pilot project. We see it as the first stage of launching the Russian OS on Huawei devices," the first source said.

Huawei is in talks with the Russian Ministry of Communications, a spokeswoman for Huawei said, but did not provide any other details.