Re: What could go wrong?
but most countries don't have near-monopolies on various types of hardware. Lets not add the OS too!
I don't think there would be. Any Chinese OS is going to have to offer something truly exceptional to see adoption in the US or Europe. The Chinese government can certainly force the locals to adopt it, but where's the USP for people with choice? Android is already "free", I certainly expect any Chinese product to have privacy and security concerns (similar to Android, I suppose in that respect), and in terms of OS maturity and capability, where's the market demand for something new? In developed markets it'd die the same death as all the other me-too smartphone OSs. Judging by the adaptations of my Xiaomi Android, I've no doubts that China can produce good software, but that alone is nowhere near enough to displace Android or IoS.
There is one killer capability still to be offered, and that is a full week's battery life for a moderate to heavy user, but given what's already been delivered by more energy efficient hardware, that's in the hands of the battery chemists and physicists not OS or hardware designers.