A new consortium including Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung and Vodafone is promoting Linux as an operating system for mobile phones. The group, which has yet to decide on a name, aims to reduce the software costs of mobile phones and create a more open environment for all parties.

These are worthy objectives but the road ahead is unlikely to be a smooth one.

At present, we have two major suppliers of operating systems for smartphones – Symbian and Microsoft. In addition, many manufacturers have their own proprietary systems.

Perhaps surprisingly there are also quite a few Linux models around; Panasonic alone has shipped eight million handsets in Japan. Over the past couple of years, over 30 Linux models have been announced from more than 20 manufacturers. Motorola has announced about a dozen models.

Linux systems for mobile phones have been put together by several companies and licensed to phone manufacturers. Companies operating in this area include Wind River, Trolltech and MoltaVista. Each one has its own programming standards and some effort is required to write applications to run on all of them. The new consortium may well solve the problems by unifying platforms, but at what cost to the existing Linux suppliers?

It’s worth looking at the relationships between the companies involved in the new consortium.

All four manufacturers already have mobile Linux products. Motorola, Panasonic and Samsung also license the Symbian OS, for which Panasonic and Samsung are also shareholders. Panasonic and NEC jointly developed a Linux for NTT DoCoMo. Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo benefit by being able to buy phones less expensively and by having more control of the features. It is clear that they all have a lot to gain from the new venture.

Whatever happens with the project, it is unlikely to be a threat to Symbian or Microsoft in the short term. Symbian is used extensively by many large phone companies, including Nokia and Sony Ericsson, and it would take a huge benefit to cause them to switch to another operating system. Microsoft is gradually picking up more manufacturers but is still some way behind Symbian.

However, neither Symbian nor Microsoft has much penetration in the low-end phone market where proprietary systems dominate. It is possible that the potentially lower cost of the Linux operating system may gain it a greater hold in this market, assuming that the hardware can run it satisfactorily.

There have been many consortia set up in the past to do a specific job and quite a few have failed. I think this latest venture will succeed in producing a common platform that will be used by the companies. The question is whether it will succeed in the wider marketplace.

Increased competition is generally a good thing but if it results in more incompatible platforms then the overall effect may not be beneficial.

‹ www.mvista.com ‹ www.trolltech.com

‹ www.windriver.com ‹ www.a-la-mobile.com

‹ bpechey@ieee.com