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Consortium Tackles Linux Mobile Phone Standards
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com is running an article stating that ten companies have recently banded together to launch a cross-industry consortium to further advance embedded Linux platforms. They hope to make 'Linux into a plug-and-play mobile phone platform comparable to Microsoft's Windows Mobile Smartphone OS, but with greater flexibility and lower costs. The LiPS (Linux Phone Standard) Forum intends to help make Linux a more standardized, interoperable mobile phone OS.' Meanwhile, some market research suggests that Linux is already giving Windows Mobile a run for its money."
OSX is based on BSD.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It's not quite as "duh" as you might think. I did mobile application development for 3 years on Windows (and I also did some embedded Linux and a tiny bit of Symbian and BREW) and I can attest that the Windows platform is far and away the most advanced from an application developer's perspective. The tools are excellent (and free, I might add) and the added benefit of being able to do most of my development on a Windows desktop target (yes, the same source built and ran for a Windows XP desktop, a Pocket PC, and a Smartphone) was a tremedous productivity boost. That said, when I did my embedded Linux work I was also able to do functional development on a desktop, so I think Linux will give Windows a run for its money in this space. And of course, access to the source code is gravy. You just can't appreciate how painful device-based development can be relative to desktop development until you experience it firsthand. Symbian (and Microsoft) both offer emulators which are helpful, but in my experience they fall far short of the advantages that derive from actually developing the code in a desktop environment.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Nokia has released several Linux-based phones already. It's aiming for using Linux in the low-end phone market, and Symbian for the high-end phones. Don't forget that network operators also have a huge influence in mobile phone specifications. They would be reluctant to have to support too many platforms and your average user wouldn't care less what OS their phone runs, as long as it doesn't eat battery life, boots quickly and is responsive.