New players board the LiMo to challenge Google's Android

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 08 January 2008 01:09

Business IT - Technology

Competition to dominate the market for Linux-based mobile handsets has ramped up another notch with a number of new players joining the LiMo Foundation whose goal is to create the world's first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices. The Google-backed Open Handset Alliance with its Android platform is the most high profile such initiative, but there is also the LiPS Forum, plans by NTT DoCoMo to foster a product that will compete internationally and a number of others vying for a share of what is tipped to be a major global market.

LiMo was founded in January 2007 by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone. The new members are Acrodea, ETRI, Huawei Technologies, Purple Labs, and Trolltech. Acrodea, headquartered in Tokyo, is a software R&D firm involved in middleware technology for mobile terminals. Its focus is on the user interface. ETRI is a Korean Government funded IT&T research organisation. Purple Labs is a French software company that claims to offer a full Linux software suite to the wireless industry packaged as a customisable software solution or as part of full hardware and software reference design.

Separately LiMo announced that had selected Azingo's mobile software platform to provide core components of its Common Integration Environment (CIE) that will be used by handset manufacturers to develop and test future releases of the LiMo mobile handset platform.
LiMo scored a double whammy with Trolltech's joining: the company was reported to have quit rival organisation, the LiPS Forum. Trolltech's defection from LiPS follows LiPS decision, announced in June, to base the user interface framework on Gnome's GTK toolkit in preference to Trolltech's offering.

Trolltech CTO, Benoit Schillings, was reported saying the company had decided that LiMo's efforts were more likely to produce a real product before the LiPS initiative. "[LiMo] is a solution based on code, not just a specification."