Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology
Anders Borg writing about the fun and crazy world of mobile and Internet service technologies.
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Thursday, June 15, 2006
New industry effort to firm up and enhance use of Linux for mobile phones
Update 060616: This new info indicates the effort is set up as a defensive maneuver against Microsoft. I hope that's not the reason, as there's enough to do to standardize on a single application environment, and Microsoft is still focusing on smartphones, which is a small part of the market. Microsoft's efforts in the mobile phone market is like a steamroller that's headed in one specific (and IMHO wrong) direction decided years ago of people that know PCs but not the mobile phone market, and rolling along at a very slow pace, still scaring the bystanders in the process, thinking that maybe Microsoft is right after all. The mobile strategy of Microsoft can be expressed like so:* Emulate MS Windows in mobile phones
* Focus on information workers
* Hardware will develop to accomodate our bloatware
That's the wrong strategy to win the market, so is Microsoft a real threat?
Mobile Linux Group Seen As Possible Defensive Move - Yahoo! News
Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Vodafone are collaborating for this new platform, which at least means there's decision power behind the effort.
Several manufacturers are already using Linux in phones (yet still mainly in higher cost smartphones) including Motorola and Samsung. Montavista Linux and Trolltech Qt/Embedded and Qtopia has so far been the preferred combination solution.
What concerned me while reading the info was that the issue is not Linux itself but the application environment and the UI. That's where there's most differentiation between solutions and what also causes the most application porting issues. Hence, that needs to be part of this effort too. Linux doesn't contain any phone specific functionality at all. Trolltech's Qtopia adds basic such functionality. Note that e.g. Series 60 and Windows Mobile are complete phone-adapted application environments in comparison.
There's in any case nothing stopping Linux from being used in phones, but a firming up of the functionality is good for both manufacturers and application developers, and for general cutting down of costs and development time.
I have a few free Linux logos if you want to make people believe your phone already has Linux inside.
Another Linux Mobile Knitting Circle - Yahoo! News
Carriers and manufacturers form pact to push mobile Linux - Engadget Mobile
Linux Coming to Your Mobile Phone - Yahoo! News
Mobile players form Linux platform pact - Yahoo! News
Motorola, Samsung, and others form Mobile Linux Platform Group (MobileBurn)
Operators, Vendors Line Up Behind Mobile Linux at MobHappy
