BT backs Linux for mobile devices

By Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 02 October 2007 01:09

Technology

BT has joined the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum, significantly boosting momentum behind the movement to make Linux a standard operating system for mobile devices.

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 24 operators, chip and equipment manufacturers and software developers. However the big European and US names in handsets are conspicuous by their absence. A number of these have separately set up the LiMo Foundation.

BT says it will participate in the LiPS Forum's specification and standardisation activities. BT Group chief technology officer, Matt Bross, commented:"At BT we strive to deliver innovation at the speed of our customers' lives. To do this we must look beyond the boundaries of the organisation to fuse internal and external innovation and the LiPS Forum is a key enabler of this open innovation. LiPS Forum provides BT with opportunities to lower deployment and management costs through standardisation, to maintain margins with faster, cost-effective services deployment and attractive customer value propositions, and to support innovative services with interoperable Linux-based devices."

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