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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 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.
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.
Any manufacturer can use it, but there would be more smart people able to hack it. Phone manufacturers probably find this a good thing, but phone companies probably don't. They'd rather have devices that are only capable of doing what they commissioned them to do.
T-mobile is a prime example of this, and probably the worst. There are some well known vulnerabilities in their network which apparently allow (or perhaps used to if they've fixed this) dishonest users to access the internet no matter what service they're supposed to get if they've hacked their phones. They're depending on the phones themselves for authentication because they know that not many people are going to be hacking their phones right now.
Linux would make that *a lot* easier to do, wouldn't it?
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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.
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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.....
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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.
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