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Consortium Tackles Linux Mobile Phone Standards

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the don't-leave-home-without-it dept.

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."

8 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Well, duh. by Slartibartfast · · Score: 4, Insightful

    C'mon. If you're an embedded developer, what're you going to (want to) go for? A closed-source, royalty-based model, or an open-source, royalty-free model -- especially wherein you're able to modify the kernel to your whim? MS's marketing will be sure to push the first option, but common sense really makes the second pretty damn attractive.

    1. Re:Well, duh. by LaughingCoder · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.
  2. I'll save you all the hassle... by Zouden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "why oh why can't I just get a phone that works as a phone?!"
    There, hopefully that'll stop this discussion from having 80% comments like this...

    --
    "A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
  3. Re:too many GEEKS by meringuoid · · Score: 3, Informative
    Apple, based on Linux, is the hottest os in the world.

    OSX is based on BSD.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  4. linux by akhomerun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    i didn't realize how huge linux was in the smartphone market. i figured it was all between windows mobile and symbian.

    i can see standardizing mobile linux as being a very good thing for linux in that market.

    maybe linux's lead isn't so large - the last link in the article, when you read through it, points out that the data does not inlclude phones/pdas running on microsoft's pocket PC edition of windows.

  5. Hurray! by LaughingCoder · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This will be a boon to mobile application developers! Symbian is basically controlled by one vendor - Nokia, and Windows Mobile obviously is controlled by Microsoft. Both OSes have their advantages and their problems. Symbian typically requires a unique executable to be built for every device. Windows needs a *slightly* beefier hardware platform (8MB minimum). Tools-wise Windows is in much better shape than Symbian. Embedded Linux could give both a run for their money. It will offer better tools (by far) than Symbian - almost on a par with Windows tools most likely -- and it will offer lighter resource requirements than Windows. The smart phone vendors should be all over this. It will be really interesting to see how Nokia reacts given their tremendous investment in, and control of, Symbian.

    --
    The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
    1. Re:Hurray! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
      It will be really interesting to see how Nokia reacts given their tremendous investment in, and control of, Symbian.

      http://www.maemo.org/?

  6. Not likely to succeed from a feature perspective by ostiguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... in the US, at least. Look at how Verizon Wireless cripples phones' feature sets. Was the ROKR's 100 song limitation resulting from Apple's desire to not have it compete with its Ipods, or was it the desire of the wireless carriers to not impact their ringtone business, or a little of both? I would not be surprised to see embedded linux being used to drive down device costs, but as a platform to provide new wireless features, it seems that time and time again, the U.S wireless carriers expect to extract fees.

    The standardization on GSM in Europe and other places would seem to invite the possibility of a market where you bring your own phone (versus having it generally tied to a provider via a protocol), and this could foster new apps running on linux phones, but GPRS does not provide a lot of bandwidth to do interesting things.

    I guess syncing PIM and email stuff is all well and good, but for new and inventive applications, I would not be too optimistic

    ostiguy