Mobile Linux accelerates

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 22 September 2007 02:25

Business IT - Technology

LiMo executive director, Morgan Gillis, said that MontaVista's expertise would be "extremely valuable in helping the LiMo Foundation reach its goals...By supporting a very broad range of processors and boards, MontaVista increases the number of manufacturers and developers who can work with LiMo. We are very pleased to have MontaVista join the LiMo Foundation."

The Open Mobile Alliance (www.openmobilealliance.org) and the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum (www.lipsforum.org) have formed an alliance that they say will increase interoperability among Linux-based phones, and between Linux- and non-Linux based phones and devices.

The OMA was formed in June 2002 by almost 200 of the world's leading mobile operators, device and network suppliers, IT companies and content and service providers. It claims to be the focal point for the development of mobile service enabler specifications which support the creation of interoperable end-to-end mobile services. It "creates interoperable mobile data service enablers that work across devices, service providers, operators, networks, and geographies."

The LiPS Forum  was formed in November 2005 to accelerate the adoption of Linux in fixed, mobile and converged devices by standardising Linux-based services and APIs that most directly influence the development, deployment and interoperability of applications and user-level services. The founding members were ARM, Cellon, Esmertec, France Telecom/Orange, FSM Labs, Huawei, Jaluna, MIZI Research, MontaVista Software, Open-Plug and PalmSource.

This number has now grown to 23, operators, chip and equipment manufacturers and software developers. However the big European and US names in handsets are conspicuous by their absence.