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Linux Gets Mobile (phone)
arclightfire writes "The Register are reporting that Motorola, one of major mobile phone manufacturers in the world, has decided that the future's bright, the future's penguin! The reasoning cited is the belief that China holds the key to the mobile phone market of tomorrow, therefore this future needs to be Linux; 'Not only is China potentially the world's largest mobile phone market, but it's also where most phones are built. Even more significantly, it's where the next generation of all mobile devices will be based, thinks Motorola.' Pax Linux?"
It will be interesting to see how Nokia and others react.
Honestly, I don't see Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson (Sony) switching to Linux. They have invested time and money into Symbian, and they have the necessary market share (at least in Europe and the US) to sit tight. Japan is another huge market, but tightly controlled by NTT DoCoMo. Device there vary very little.
IMHO, it all boils down to the question whether China really is the market of the future. Sure, it has a large population, and there are currently no mobile phones. But is the infrastructure alread there? What good is a phone without the network? Most likely, they will focus on cities with a high population density. But that will also reduce the number of people, although I admit I have no idea how many chinese live in the urban areas and how many in the rural areas.
Bottom line: designing a phone exclusively for the chinese market can backfire. And why do so? A Linux powered phone may also sell in Europe and the US. Why neglegt those markets?
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
They'll do nothing. Just because Motorola is selling their share of Symbian to Nokia and using Linux as the OS on their phone doesn't change a thing.
Linux isn't the be-all and end-all to everything. Symbian is an excellent operating system designed for mobile phones and Nokia et al have pumped loads of money into Symbian and will continue to do so in the future.
It makes absolutely no business sense whatsoever to jump ship from a proven O/S to one that is the geeks choice just because one company has done so.
As far as Nokia is concerned, as long as Motorola don't use Microsoft, they're happy. Nokia, like others, fear that a market with Microsoft as the dominating software provider will turn the phone market into something similar to the PC market (with hardware vendors getting tighter and tighter margins and Microsoft raking in all the money).
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IMHO, it all boils down to the question whether China really is the market of the future. Sure, it has a large population, and there are currently no mobile phones.
Sounds like you've never been to China or aren't in touch with the state of affairs of the country. When China decided to put in place a telephone infrastructre they went wireless, simply because it was the cheapest and fastest way to provide access to such a large teritory. To give you an idea of the coverage, check out the coverage map of China Mobile Communication Corp. Most people I met in China had mobile phones. In fact the coverage over there makes the setup in North America look terrible.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
How would either of them be cheaper? Both Symbian and Linux are for low powered devices. Putting the code onto a chip would be the same cost.
Symbian 0 - Linux 0 (both equal, no points)
no licensing fees
True, however the reason behind the licencing fees is so that Symbian can recruit people and pay them to develop full time. If you were going to go with a Linux based solution you'd have to pay for the development yourself. Also, most of the companies who are using Symbian have shares in the company and agreed the licencing model themselves to directly ensure they don't get screwed. Symbian cannot do a Microsoft here and pull a bait and switch tactic since they are owned by the very same companies that they do business with.
Symbian 1 - Linux 0.5
competitive advantage
Symbian is already out there, already proven and already has applications written for it. Linux in the mobile arena isn't as proven, isn't already written with the mobile in mind (there would still be a lot of work required), requires that companies give away their competitive advantage (through the GPL licence) and has far less applications written for it.
Symbian 2 - Linux 0.5
I still see no reason to jump ship. Even if other companies jumped ship, it won't signal the death of Symbian.
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