Mobile Vendors Say ‘Hello Linux’
While much of the focus at this year’s LinuxWorld event was on enterprise virtualization and new desktop opportunities, there were a number of significant announcements that reinforce the impact of the open source operating system on the mobile device market.
Much of Linux’s initial success as a mobile phone and device operating system has been in Asia, but it is spreading to Europe and the US, not least because of the commitment of Motorola.
The Schaumburg, Illinois-based handset vendor announced at LinuxWorld that it has sold more than nine million Linux-based handsets worldwide to date and that up to 60% of its product portfolio is expected to be Linux-based over the next few years.
That drive to Linux will be supported by Motomagx, the company’s new mobile Linux platform, which is designed to support applications developed in Java ME, Web UI and native Linux applications.
Only the first of those environments is supported by Motomagx currently, the company admitted, with its Motodev Studio for Java ME application development environment available to download now. WebUI and native Linux Motodev plug-ins are due by the end of the year.
Meanwhile the first mobile devices based on Motomagx are available now worldwide in the form of the MotoRokr Z6 with a focus on music, and the Razr2 V8, the company’s first Linux-based handset fo0r the North American market.
Motorola is also pushing Linux in its embedded communications systems for which it announced a partnership with embedded operating systems specialist Wind River through which they will provide integrated AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA communications platforms with Carrier Grade Linux and VxWorks runtimes.
The first bundled product of the relationship, a MicroTCA-based commercial-off-the-shelf product with Wind River Carrier Grade Linux, is available via distributors Arrow Electronics and Avnet Applied Computing Solutions.
Meanwhile Wind River also announced that its Platform for Consumer Devices, Linux Edition, had been chosen by Palm as the Linux platform for its Foleo ‘mobile companion’. The mobile PC partner for the company’s Treo handset is due for release at the end of the summer and Wind River is helping Palm ensure it will have usable applications.
Along with the core Linux platform, Wind River is also providing Palm and its developer community with its Workbench development environment, professional services and customers support.
Meanwhile mobile software specialist Access, which acquired PalmSource and the original Palm OS in late 2005, maintained its commitment to Linux as a mobile operating system with new native development tools and partners.
The Tokyo, Japan-based vendor announced that it is incorporating the Sourcery G++ development tools from CodeSourcery into its Access Linux Platform for native Linux-based application development.
The company also announced that it had added eight new Linux Platform and NetFront browser partners to its Access Connect Ecosystem (ACE) global partner program, including CodeSourcery, Fluendo, Mentor Graphics, Movial, Mozat, OpenedHand, Sigmatrix and UnisCode.
The company cited ABI Research forecasts that by 2012, more than 127 million devices will be enabled with a commercial Linux operating system, up from 8.1 million in 2007.
Further evidence of the growing role of Linux as a mobile platform came from the LiMo Foundation, which announced that it had 12 new members since it was launched in January to create a single Linux-based platform for mobile devices.
Originally formed by Motorola, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, NTT DoCoMo, and Vodafone, LiMo has added LG Electronics, Wind River, McAfee, Aplix, and Celunite as core members and Ericsson, MontaVista, ARM, Broadcom, Innopath, KTF and NXP as associate members.