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Linux Headed For Smartphone Domination?
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has published a summary of research findings from Zelos Group that predicts that Linux is going dominate the smartphone market, beating out both Symbian and Microsoft. Zelos says that Linux scored highest on the two criteria that matter most to OEMs and carriers: openness and low cost. Microsoft scored lowest in these criteria. The article says Zelos believes Symbian beats Microsoft due to the flexibility of its licensing terms, and Microsoft prospects will be stymied to an extent by its desire to strictly manage how its brand is used. The conclusion: Linux will be the preferred operating system for connected devices."
SCO files suit today against Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, Cingular, Nextel, Audiovox, Handspring, Hitachi, Kyocera, LG, Motorola, NEC, Neonode, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, VTech...
Asked for a comment, SCO was quoted as saying "There's gotta be some blood in one of these stones."
So with this phone, I get to grep for the girl's number I got last night, with Windows I get to grope the girl I met last night. Which one wins?
the best system does NOT alway win in the market.
the domination of a market depends on marketing, lobbying, cash and quality of the product.
so, linux has 1 out of 4. not bad, but still a long way to go
Asked for a comment, SCO was quoted as saying "There's gotta be some blood in one of these stones."
If you squeeze a stone hard enough, you'll break your hand.
The coolest voice ever.
I think the flexibility that Linux provides to the manufacturers is the key factor in its being the OS of choice. Any OS that the hardware makers can use to their advantage to make the product more robust n fast will definitely be ahead in the race.Seriously doubt an Microsoft OS will give that kind of flexibility or 'openness'.
Lord of the Binges.
Thanks! After drooling over his friend's smart phone that runs the 'evil' mircrosoft my husband now has an excuse to have a lovely linux smartphone top of his (insert occasion here) present list. Like he needed an excuse to bend my ears about how great Linux is!
It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
"Zelos says that Linux scored highest on the two criteria that matter most to OEMs and carriers: openness and low cost. Microsoft scored lowest in these criteria. The article says Zelos believes Symbian beats Microsoft due to the flexibility of its licensing terms, and Microsoft prospects will be stymied to an extent by its desire to strictly manage how its brand is used. The concusion: Linux will be the preferred operating system for connected devices."
I think what this person fails to understand is that the preferred OS is dictated by what customers spend their money on, not by the cost or the openness. That's not to say that Microsoft will win. But you all should remember that Microsoft is the least open and most expensive desktop OS out there, and it's well ahead of everybody else on the desktop.
"Derp de derp."
I happen to know some very skilled embedded systems developers, and at least one (also a Linux kernel maintainer) recently lost a possible contract with a very large multinational company because Linux turned out to be too large for the environment they wanted to run it in.
Hopefully VSTa or a like open operating system better suited to very small environments (eCos? dunno) will become practical and popular for such usage. Linux is reasonable in larger embedded systems -- networking hardware and the like -- but its suitability becomes less and less as space constraints constrict (think 100K of RAM or less). Remember, it's not just the cost of the OS that's an issue -- the cost of the extra hardware to run it, and the loss of battery life, is also a dealbreaker.
So no, I'm not convinced by this report; the summary makes it look too much like something concocted by talking to managers with insufficient engineering input.
Article over at LinuxDevices.com: "Motorola has launched its first embedded Linux/Java smartphone, the much-anticipated A760, in the Asian market."
Just last year, there were 3 million smartphones sold
Symbian owned two-thirds of the market, Microsoft - 14%, Palm - 13%
HP is becoming the biggest name in the industry with 33% market share globally, but Nokia has 78% in Europe, Middle East and Asia.
Surely there's a chance that LinuxDevices has a bit of an interest in this?
:^) LinuxDevices didn't do the study or release the report. They just wrote about it, just like Wired or CNN or Slashdot would...
Looks like you didn't read carefully
Yes, Linux is open, and it is free, but there aren't any distributions designed for cellphones that are open and free. When you license Sybian or Windows for Smartphone, you get EVERYTHING. You get a reference design for the hardware, a GUI, interfaces for common chipsets, LCD drivers specific for cellphones, etc, etc. Yes, I am aware that Motorola has released a Linux smartphone, but all of the important stuff is still closed source. When you use Linux you get an OS. That's it. A Company has to decide if building the rest from scratch is less than just licensing an OS that already finished the hard stuff. I am betting it often won't be.
I think Linux is a long way off dominating the desktop, mainly because Linux systems are relatively difficult to work with (eg. installing a hardware driver for a camera etc is beyond the capability of Joe Sixpack). This is not a problem in more restrictive systems (eg. servers and embedded systems) where Joe Sixpack does not have to fiddle.
Embedding Linux is way easier and more productive than, say, Windows CE. I do development for both and after doing some Linux stuff, WinCE work is just so depressing.
Compare: change 1 line of kernel code and get running.
Linux: 9 seconds compile etc to build a new kernel image. 6 seconds ethernet download and boot. 15 seconds total.
WinCE: Build 10+ **minutes** to do a full build because the partial build does not work reliably. 3 **minutes** to ethernet download/boot.
Class: who's going to get more work done in a day?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Those guys at Zelos don't know the market then.
- Openness is desirable, but guess what, Symbian is essentially "open" to the phone developers. Linux has no advantage there.
- Low cost. Yes, developers want low cost, but here's where the Zelos guys miss the boat. Low cost means the TOTAL, OVERALL cost, including missing market opportunities from slower time-to-market.
Ask LG and others why they licensed bits of their software from Nokia.
What costs you is the time to develop the product, NOT per device licensing costs. This is NOT a personal computer market where the OS license cost can make up a large percentage of the cost.
Symbian works, it's good enough, it's from a consortium of the mobile phone makers, so it's relatively open and has easy licensing costs. Add to that the base of existing developers, it's hard to see how Linux will crack the market unless some extra whizz-bang functionality is added on the phones that Symbian can't support.
Plus, almost no user cares what OS their phone runs.
I had a chat with one of the prod. development managers from Nokia. He doesn't like the Windows-based products for mobile phones, but it _isn't_ for the reasons the Linux zealots expect. It isn't cost, and he didn't even mention "closed-source".
What about palm for smartphones? As a longtime user of the Kyocera 6035 who recently upgraded to a Treo 600 I've fallen in love with the palm-based smart phones. I've looked at some windows ones and they just have *too* much functionality so that it all gets confused and horribly complicated. I haven't looked much at Symbian based ones but they didn't seem to have as many features and certainly not the broad application base either Palm or Windows have. As far as Linux are there any smartphones out there based on it?
Nokia is practicly dominating the market, and other top players too go for symbian... This results that there will be large global pool for symbian applications soon... Another point is that number 1 mobile phone manufacturer (NOKIA) has stake in symbian so, they won't give up on it for linux. So atleast europe, asia and middle-east will go for symbian, instead of something else...
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
2002: Post "In Soviet Russia" joke - +5 Funny guaranteed
2003: Post "I for one welcome.." joke - +5 Funny guaranteed
And now the SCO-699$ licensing jokes... in every thread even remotely related to Linux. Maybe even several times...
-1 Redundant, please guys.