Verizon Wireless Announces Plan for Linux Phones
Posted on: Wednesday, 14 May 2008, 09:00 CDT
Verizon Wireless announced on Wednesday plans to become the first U.S. mobile carrier to use a free operating system created by the LiMo Foundation.
LiMo, or Linux Mobile represents the foundation’s goal of creating cheaper mobile phone software that will unite cell phone models from all makers.
“Verizon Wireless is demonstrating itself a champion of openness in mobile innovation by joining the board of LiMo Foundation,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation.
“Major wireless service providers from across North America, Asia and Europe are now engaged in committed collaboration through LiMo. This offers further concrete evidence that LiMo is positioned at the heart of the rapidly emerging, industry-wide trend to secure the benefits of openness and choice in technology.”
The LiMo Foundation has already received the backing of large Asian and European carriers, as well as handset makers like Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.
"There is now no doubt that LiMo-powered devices will comprise a significant percentage of many operators' portfolios," said Stuart Carlaw, cell-phone industry analyst at ABI Research.
Kyle Malady, vice president of network for Verizon, said phones designed to run LiMo could hit the market as soon as next year.
That could be damaging to Qualcomm, which supplies the software for most of Verizon's phones, excluding smart phones.
"We expect that Linux Mobile will rapidly become our preferred operating system," Malady said. "As the development community looks at how best to bring new applications to the marketplace, they should check out LiMo and Linux Mobile first."
But Verizon will not be offering phones solely based on LiMo. The company said it plans to continue to sell phones with a variety of operating systems.
LiMo is expected to speed development of new features, but the interface that customers are faced with will not appear to be very different.
The foundation released the first version of its software package in March. Since then, Motorola, Samsung, LG and Panasonic have presented phones using the platform.
Verizon Wireless joins the foundation’s other 39 members in working within LiMo’s transparent governance model.
The cell phone market is much more segmented than the PC market in terms of operating systems.
"The mobile industry really was very reluctant to follow the path of the PC industry and cede the heart of the device to any single company," said Morgan Gillis, executive director of the London-based LiMo foundation.
"This is really why Microsoft has not gained any significant traction with Windows Mobile, and also why Nokia has not been successful with Series 60 as an industry platform proposition."
Also joining the LiMo Foundation on Wednesday were SK Telecom Co.,the largest carrier in South Korea, and the Mozilla Corp., which puts out the popular Firefox Web browser.
Like Linux, Firefox is maintained on an "open source" basis, where everyone has free access to the software's blueprints.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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