Motorola virtualized smartphone will kill iPhone price: OK Labs

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 31 March 2009 04:04

Business IT - Technology

“Today’s news provides the latest evidence of how virtualization-based architecture can benefit handset OEMs and mobile phone users worldwide.”

“The use of OKL4 provides enough CPU performance to support a Linux environment with a rich GUI (graphical user interface) typical for a high-end CPU, while concurrently supporting the real-time processing needs of the modem software, all on a single ARM9 processor,” said Gernot Heiser, CTO of Open Kernel Labs.

While Motorola hasn't yet released details of pricing or the exact operating systems being used, OK Labs indicated to iTWire last week that the Evoke QA4 would be offered at a "feature phone" price, hundreds of dollars cheaper than smartphones like the iPhone and Blackberry.

OK Labs' Subar told iTWire that the use of virtualization had enabled Motorola to trim the manufacturing cost of the Evoke QA4 by US$45.

According to the Subar, the manufacturing cost saving translates to hundreds of dollars for the end user.

"The savings for both OEMs and mobile network operators are significant," he said.

Motorola also hasn't released details of the operating systems for the Evoke QA4 but OK Labs hinted that Android will be the Linux-based one that provides the graphical environment applications.