NICTA spin-out OK Labs scores $US7.6m venture funds

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 January 2009 08:04

Business IT - Technology

OK Labs was spun out as a commercial entity in August 2006. In April 2007 it set up its worldwide headquarters in the United States saying that the R&D operation would remain in Australia, while the corporate office, including business development and field application engineering functions, would move to the US.

Heiser said this was still the case. "We employ about 30 people in Australia and we are looking for more...We have about 10 in the US."

OK Labs' microkernel software was initially developed under the direction of Heiser, then professor of operating systems at the University of NSW and the program leader of NICTA's Embedded, Real-time, and Operating Systems Research Program (ERTOS).

Today he divides his time between NICTA and OK Labs, because, he says, R&S at NICTA feeds into the work of OK Labs.

Today OK Labs claims that is mico kernel is embedded in 250,000 handsets. Heiser said that most of these were CDMA devices using Qualcomm Mobile Station Modem chipsets through an agreement between Qualcomm and OK Labs.

"It is also in some high end Windows Mobile devices including the HTC Titan and the HTC Android phone." This is expected to be launched this week in Australia by HTC and Telstra.