Additionally, VMware say, end users will benefit by being able to run multiple profiles on the same phone – for instance, one for personal use and one for work use.

Fundamentally, VMware MVP is a thin layer of software embedded on a mobile phone which will separate applications and data from the underlying hardware just as VMware’s full-blown products separate operating systems and file spaces from underlying hardware.

VMware MVP will be optimised so it runs efficiently on mobile phones, with their limited memory capacity and requirement for low power consuming applications.

The pitch to handset vendors is just as virtual machines make it dead easy for a server administrator to cut over virtual machines from one underlying physical server to another so too it will be a snap for mobile phone makers to produce applications and operating systems which don’t have to care what the underlying hardware is.

Like VMware for servers, the operating system will simply “see” a generic set of drivers and targets those. It’s up to the VMware layer to implement the genuine hardware interfacing across all possible target chipsets.

What's the downside?