Android's adversaries analysed - or are they?

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 03 January 2008 11:55

Opinion and Analysis

Back in November 2005 a number of carriers and manufacturers, lead by France Telecom, launched Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum to "promote development and deployment of applications and services on Linux phones through standardisation."

Its president, Haila Wang, CTO of France Telecom's Beijing R&D lab explained at the time that: "Linux offers an increasingly attractive alternative to proprietary operating systems. By standardising the Linux-based system services and application programming interfaces (APIs), we will help to simplify the creation of fully functional Linux phones, ensuring they match the requirements of operators and increasing their appeal to consumers."

LiPS said it would support requirements defined by the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP), an association of mobile operators worldwide focussed on defining the functional requirements of mobile phones. For other classes of devices such as converged devices, the LiPS Forum will seek input from its member operators and other industry bodies.

Conflict, competition and/or co-operation with Android would seem to be inevitable. But since that announcement the LiPS camp has gathered considerable momentum. In August 2006 it announced an agreement with Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) to collaborate to reduce fragmentation in the mobile space and provide the industry with open, flexible and customisable Linux-based solutions to increase revenue opportunities.

Then in January 2007 Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone formed the LiMo Foundation (www.limofoundation.org) to develop and promote Linux-based platform for mobile devices. It aimed to create the world's first globally competitive Linux-based software platform for mobile devices and promised that handsets supporting the LiMo platform would reach consumers in the first half of 2008.

Sounds like is aims are almost identical to those of the Android-backing Open Handset Alliance, and it has a head start. MontaVista, which claims be the leading provider of Linux for intelligent devices and communications infrastructure, joined LiMo in September 2007 .