Motorola has made no secret of its new-found love affair with Google’s mobile OS, Android. Having just recently kicked WinMo to the curb, word on the mobile street is that Motorola has now dumped LiMo as well. According to jkOnTheRun, Motorola VP, Christy Wyatt, has abandoned her seat on the LiMo Foundation Board. In order to make sure its new position is clear, Motorola took things one step further by changing its association with LiMo from that of a founding member to lowly associate member. → Read More
Huawei has big plans for 2009. The OEM handset maker plans to launch two to three different Android phones and maybe even a Symbian and LiMo handset all this year. Even with the global economic doom and gloom? Wowzers! → Read More
Technology has made leaps and bounds since the last President was inaugurated so it’s only right that Obama gets a new ride. “The Beast” as it has been dubbed, is still a Cadillac but not one you can buy off the shelf. Of course it’s heavily modified and some claim that it can keep rolling even after a direct hit from a rocket propelled grenade, but even the style is something exclusive on this caddy. → Read More
Nokia announced today that it “plans to acquire the remaining shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own” and then open the Symbian Foundation along with other device manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson, Motorola, AT&T, LG, and others. The foundation will be open to all developers and "will provide a unified platform with common UI framework” under the royalty-free Eclipse Public License. The Symbian operating system is currently the most widely used in the world, found on over 50% of “smart mobile device” handsets. This move to open source will place Symbian in competition with Google’s Android platform and the LiMo platform, although only “selected components” will be available at the Symbian Foundation’s launch. The rest of the platform will by fully opened up over the next two years. → Read More
With LiMo’s recent announcement that Verizon had hopped onto their Board of Directors, things are starting to heat up between the LiMo platform and Google’s competing product, Android. Both are open-source Linux-based platforms, and both are aiming to rock the handset market sometime in the next year or so. LiMo is Linux-based. Android is Linux-based. But they’re far from the same. Below, I’ll try to explain some of the key differences without going too heavy on the tech jargon. (Fiiine. It gets a bit heavy for a paragraph or two. But I’ll avoid it where possible.) Read the rest of this entry » → Read More
Verizon has signed up as the final member on the board of directors of the LiMo Foundation, a group founded by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Vodafone “to deliver an open and globally consistent software platform based upon Mobile Linux for use by the whole industry to catalyze next-generation mobile consumer experiences.” I’m all for openness, but what happens when we suddenly find ourselves with a dozen different “open” mobile alliances like this? Hopefully they’ll all be compatible with one another, although LiMo is commonly known as an Android competitor and questions have arisen as to whether or not the two platforms will play nicely together. Full press release after the jump. → Read More
Linux, as most people think of it, is an alternative desktop OS for nerds. And those people are right: the vast majority of machines running Linux are the personal computers of hobbyists and enthusiasts. That being said, you might be using Linux now and not even know it. Stripped-down versions of Linux are well suited for modern cellphones. The OS already has all most of the needed code for connectivity of every kind built into it, and there are enough other open-source apps that can be adopted that it cuts production time — and costs — considerably. Because of this many smartphone makers and application makers and carriers are turning their attention to Linux for handsets. And you might want to consider it too. → Read More
ARM, a British chip designer, may reveal a prototype of a mobile phone based on Google’s open-source Android next week at the Mobile World Congress wireless show in Barcelona. The showing could come as early as Monday. Google and ARM have declined to comment on this, so don’t book a flight to Spain unless you’re willing to gamble on this rumor. Taiwan’s High Tech Computer Corp. and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile both plan to offer phones based on Google’s Android software platform. Google is touting Android as a software system that may shakeup mobile telecommunications. Android is designed to make the Web as accessible from mobile devices as it is from PCs. Android is supported by the Open Handset Alliance which is in direct competition with the LiMo Foundation. As MobileCrunch reported earlier this week, the LiMo Foundation (plans) to Launch (its) Phone Platform in March. By showing its wares at Barcelona, the Open Handset Alliance may be trying to show that its system is ready for a handset while LiMo has yet to launch its platform. If this kind of race interests you, it looks as though the match has gone from the theoretical to the practical. Research firm Strategy Analytics predicts that Android will be in 2% of smartphones by the end of this year. → Read More
The LiMo Foundation plans to release the first version of its Linux software platform for mobile phones this march. LiMo’s goal is to offer handset manufacturers and operators a hardware-independent software platform that is safe for downloadable applications. LiMo Foundation executive director Morgan Gillis isn’t happy with just publishing the code on time. He wants to put handsets into consumers’ hands and says that will happen very soon. The LiMo Foundation will publish a beta version of the software’s APIs (application programming interfaces) today so that developers can begin writing applications to run on it. The API’s will remain beta versions because there may be minor changes made to the software before it is launched in March. The LiMo Foundation is focusing on phones’ middleware so mobile phone manufacturers and operators can write their own user interface and content applications. Gillis says this freedom is important to manufactures and operators because “the cost of developing the first phone on a platform can be as high as half a billion dollars.” Phone manufactures may be unwilling to invest that much money in a new operating system if it will also leave them tied to another company’s interface and content applications, Gillis said. “That’s why Windows Mobile and Series 60 didn’t gain broad traction; suppliers didn’t feel comfortable,” he said. Even though the LiMo Foundation’s code has a few things to be worked out, it has already been proven in handsets sold or distributed by founder members Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone, Gillis said. LiMo is in competition with Google’s Android code, which is supported by the Open Handset Alliance. This year could see the opening shots of a battle for market share between the LiMo foundation and the Open Source Handset Alliance. → Read More
Linux mobile software developer, Celunite, has become the first mobile phone operation system provider to join the LiMo Foundation. LiMo is a nonprofit organization that lobbies to increase the adaptation of Linux within the mobile industry. Giants Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodapone are founding members of the LiMo Foundation. The goal of LiMo is to make the Linux-based software platform for mobile devices globally competitive. “We welcome Celunite as the first mobile phone platform provider to join our founding members engaged in building a world-class mobile Linux platform,” said NTT DoCoMo’s Senior Vice President, Dr. Kiyohito Nagata, chairman of the LiMo Foundation. “Celunite is keen to begin assisting LiMo to realize a competitive step change in the delivery of handsets and service proposition to consumers.” Celunite → Read More
