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Can Linux Dominate Smartphone OS?
Jeryl Kesh writes "Does Motorola's roaring success with its Linux-based 'Ming' phones in China indicate that the open-source platform is now a serious contender against Symbian and Windows Mobile in the handheld device software platform arena?
The world No. 2 mobile phone maker, which debuted the Ming smartphone in March this year in China, shipped more than one million Linux-based units in China alone last quarter, according to research firm Canalys. However with Nokia refusing to adopt Linux, Symbian remains by far the top mobile device OS, according to Canalys, with a 67 percent share, well ahead of second-place Windows Mobile, with 15 percent of the market.
Eirik Chambe-Eng, the co-founder of one of the most popular mobile Linux platforms, Norway-based TrollTech, has also reportedly predicted a 'revolution' in the use of open-source software on phones and handheld devices. His contention was that Linux gives handset manufacturers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) 'complete control,' and in turn keeps Microsoft and Symbian at bay."
I would have to say yes. Being open source, any manfacturer could use it on their phone. And considering that phones aren't really OS dependant...why wouldn't they go to linux. I don't buy my phone based on what software is on it, I want a phone that is loud, easy to use and has long battery life.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
I need to buy a more modern phone, my old motorola is limping along on three legs now but I refuse to buy a phone that is based on MS or Symbian. I do NOT trust either of them, at all.
I DO trust Linux.
Last I checked Windows Mobile almost doesn't exist in comparison to the installed base of Balckberry and Palm OS Treos (yes I know theres a WM version of Treo, but everyone know it's crap). I smell fud.
Where have you been? Windows Mobile is still around. Microsoft never cancelled it...
Here's a market share study by Gartner for worldwide shipments. Note that it counts windows smartphones only and not PDA phones. (Smartphones do not have the touch screen; instead, they have a numeric keypad like a normal phone.)
Microsoft's recent earings call indicates that their market share is increasing -- the article quotes a 90% increase. These statistics don't seem to include Linux based phones.
There's been more selection from Symbian phones in the past, but right now there's more Windows Mobile devices available in the USA. Symbian has also been in the market longer.
This article states that Microsoft has a 17% market share and some analyst expects their market share to grow.
Note that almost all Linux phones are shipped in Asia -- I have never seen a Linux phone for sale in the United States, but plenty of Windows phones and a few Symbian ones. The number of Symbian devices available retail from cellular providers seems to be declining here.
I personally use a Symbian phone.
Why do thay call phones which need time to boot(!) and which need virus killer to function properly "smart"?
Thank god I still have one of those "stupid" 5110's from Nokia.
If there is some kind of Linux at the bottom of it - great, but running Linux is not much of a selling point if the UI is junk. I have an ADSL modem & wireless router which uses Linux. Fortunately it's an excellent bit of kit because I would curse it everyday no matter what OS was underneath if it wasn't.
As I read this /. issue on my Nokia 770 running Linux I tend to disagree on some points made in this news item.
Yes the Nokia 770 is not a GSM phone but It's a device capable of running many applications (like http://www.gizmoproject.com/ and http://www.google.com/talk/ ). The software is based on debian and the http://maemo.org/ platform.
Having used almost all currently available cell phone OSes (Palm OS on a Treo, Symbian on a P800, Mobile Windows on friends' phones and some weird choices like Ogo), I can say with some authority that they all suck. Well, "suck" may be a bit strong a word, but each of them has both huge shortcomings and lots of small areas where they simply don't pay enough attention to details.
What smart phones really need is for Apple to fix them. This probably won't happen, so the next best thing is a Linux based OS which allows us programmers to fix what the big companies don't seem to be capable of fixing.
"However with Nokia refusing to adopt Linux..."
?? I smell FUD. They may not have gotten around to using Linux in their cell phones (yet), but as a company Nokia has definitely adopted and supports Linux.
Nokia certainly hasn't 'refused' to adopt linux. They are, after all, responsible for a huge initiative in mobile computing with maemo (http://www.maemo.org). They have a linux device (the 770) in the market today. It may not be a phone, but it shows a commitment on Nokia's part to pursuing Linux.
Nokia has also been quite involved with OpenSource, particularly with their KHTML based browser that ships on S60 phones.
The point being, Nokia actually seems like a prime candidate for a Linux device. I would be SHOCKED if they didn't have one in the works right now. I would certainly expect them to have one in the market before the end of 2007. Every indicator points in that direction.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
My company markets reference designs for handheld devices (typically cell phones, media players, etc..) to OEMs. Our customer demand for Linux has increased dramatically in the past year. We've doubled the size of our group, and we still can't hire engineers with Linux experience fast enough.
Yes, we do WinCE development too. But, the WinCE group not only has at least twice as many engineers, they are also behind the Linux group in terms of features. When it comes to rapid development, there's simply nothing better than Linux, because most of the work has already been done. This allows us to concentrate on adding features that differentiate us from the competition, rather than on merely getting something working.
But WinCE also places substantial roadblocks to rapid development. A routine build of WinCE takes 20 minutes; a clean build takes more than an hour. By comparison, our average Linux build time is about 30 seconds, with a clean build taking about 15 or 20 minutes. But it gets worse for WinCE:
Quite frankly, I'm glad to see the demand for Linux growing. However, I'm also putting in quite a bit of overtime because of it, so it is sort of a mixed blessing.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
In the US, at least, the cost of mobile phones is massively subsidized by cellular providers offering phones for far below value in exchange for a contract for some length of cellular service. Therefore, the actual price of mobile phones here is all but irrelevant and there's no market pressure to reduce prices.
First, I wish all the people who don't want a "smart" phone would just be quiet. We know. Go buy a basic phone. It's not like there aren't any. All smartphone postings should include this disclaimer.
Second, I'm wondering really how open the linux is that's installed on these phones. If proprietary interfaces and device drivers are used, it might as well be running symbian|windows|whatever. Could you develop an app for these phones as easily as you could for gnome/kde/etc, and release it 100% open source for use by others?
Currently, there's loads of open source programs available for the symbian phones, especially series 60. With your choice of C++, Python or Java, it's easy to get started with writing code. Lots of apps drives consumer demand.
More recently, Nokia stopped supporting Linux for developing applications (previously there was decent support for Java, and help with C++). This makes it much much harder to develop S60 apps on Linux, so a load of potential developers won't bother.
The big issue now is symbian signed. With S60 version 3 onward, they've seriously locked down the platform. If your code isn't signed, it won't run on most devices, and even where it will, it won't be allowed to do interesting things (write to filesystem, talk to network etc). If you want to get your code signed, you have to have an expensive verisign certificate, and pay a bunch of cash to have your app reviewed.
In one fell swoop, almost all open source programs have stopped working on S60 version 3, and won't work again. All the developers are really pissed, and no-one's willing to talk about it from symbian (try emailing them about it, and they just mutter about python). All of a sudden, your new S60 phone is half useless, as you can't get any decent apps for it.
Not the brightest move ever.....
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
I've dealt with a lot of the new 200-500 mhz generation of embedded devices coming out. Smart phones, game systems, PDA's, control systems, etc, etc. Both programming for and using. By far, the worst I've dealt with has been Windows mobile. It's a joke. My work pocket PC "smartphone" freezes up 3-4 times a month (completely unacceptable for that sort of thing). My personal cell phone with a specialized OS has never frozen in 2 years. I've never even loaded 3rd party apps on my smartphone. Windows mobile's interface is horrible and inconsistant. Nothing is ever kept in a logical place. Basically, it feels to me like they took a full version of windows and stripped it. On the other hand, when I use embedded devices with a true specialized OS it feels like it was built from the ground up correctly.
I won't get into the Blackberry, Symbian, Linux debate. They each have their merits. However, all three are leaps and bounds ahead of Windows Mobile. It's the biggest piece of garbage embedded OS I've ever seen.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
According to everything I've read via Google, the phone is primarily for Asian markets.
"This Linux PDA-phone for Asia"
The A1200 is expected to launch in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in mid-February, with US availability sometime after that.
As far as I can tell, this US availability has yet to surface and this phone is only available imported and is not actively sold/carried by any US provider.
Actually Symbian are committed to Open Source as a way of getting more people to develop on their platform (and hence get more phones into the mid-range market).
For details about how to get freeware apps signed (for nothing) have a look here.
Just because the consumer doesn't see the actual cost of the phone as a distinct line item doesn't make it irrelevant. The provider still factors it into their calculations of how much to rip you off ^H^H^H charge you per month.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
I have been using a Symbian phone for the past 3 years. It's been a great phone with all the free/commercial applications available on-line. I could install either symbian based apps or java apps (which is always slow). I owned a Moto Razr and didn't like the firmware one bit. It sucked! I just threw the razr away and kept using my old symbian phone. This is why I'm afraid what Moto is going to do with Linux. Symbian gives true multitasking with a taskbar so that i can switch between applications. Does your current mobile phone do that?
I don't want a signature.
It's more important that it be a stable applications platform. If Linux has 90% market share, but constituted of 10 incompatible versions, then really you have 10 differen OS's and it wouldn't be fair to count market share in that way. What makes Windows Mobile and Symbian really interesting is that I can write an app and be pretty sure it will run out the box on devices I never tested with.