Chinese telecom operator China Unicom, which currently is an official reseller of the Apple iPhone, has launched its self-developed smartphone operating system, Wophone, which the company claims to be the first smart terminal operating system with independent intellectual property rights in China.

China Unicom reportedly started the development of the operating system and the basic software platform in 2008. After three years' efforts, the Wophone operating system is finally launched and is expected to benefit the research and development of mobile phones based on China Unicom's WCDMA network.

China Unicom revealed that Chinese and overseas mobile phone manufacturers, including Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Huawei, ZTE, TCL, and Sony Ericsson, will launch the first batch of mobile phones using the Wophone OS this year, challenging Google's Android, Apple's iOS and Microsoft's Windows Mobile Phone 7.

The operator said the Wophone OS is based on the Linux 2.6 system and it is entirely different from China Mobile's competing Ophone OS, which is based on the Android system. The Wophone OS can apparently support all the different 3G Chinese mobile standards – WCDMA, CDMA2000 and TD-SCDMA – and the 4G standard, LTE.

It can be applied by different types of smart terminals, including tablet computers, TVs and game consoles. Its applications cover various industries such as finance, securities, medical treatment, and transportation, according to the company.