Mobile Linux accelerates

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 22 September 2007 02:25

Business IT - Technology

The role of Linux in mobile devices received a couple of significant boosts this week with Linux software company MontaVista joining a group of major handset manufacturers that are backing Linux and with the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) announcing a collaboration.

These developments follow research company, ABI Research, last month forecasting that Linux would be the fastest growing smartphone OS over the next five years accounting for 31 percent of all smartphones on the market by 2012.

However penetration and usage are not necessarily equivalent. Symbian claims to account of over 70 percent of smartphone operating systems today but, according to Australian market researcher, Telsyste, it hardly rates in enterprises' plans for smartphone based applications.

MontaVista has joined the LiMo Foundation (www.limofoundation.org) a body set up in January 2007 by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone to develop and promote Linux-based platform for mobile devices. It aiims to create the world's first globally competitive Linux-based software platform for mobile devices. Handsets supporting the LiMo platform are expected to reach consumers in the first half of 2008.

MontaVista, based in California claims to be the leading provider of Linux for intelligent devices and communications infrastructure. Its Mobilinux software "provides an embedded Linux operating system optimised for mobile devices and a rich development environment...[enabling] developers and manufacturers to deliver new handsets to consumers more quickly and with greater functionality, fast performance, and battery-extending power management." MontaVista claims that some 35 million smartphones, cellphones, and other mobile devices run on Mobilinux, far more than any other commercial Linux.