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Industry players plan to drive mobile Linux platform with LiMo

A consortium, comprised of six industry heavyweights, has named its brainchild, which aims to develop a Linux-based platform for mobile devices, the LiMo foundation.

By Maggie Holland, 26 Jan 2007 at 16:20

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An exclusive open source membership club, backed by six of the world's biggest mobile players, officially opened its doors to members yesterday.

Those wishing to join must be interested in being part of an ecosystem that creates a new set of application program interfaces (APIs), architecture and source code to develop components for a new Linux-based software platform for mobile devices.

Dubbed the LiMo Foundation, the not-for-profit initiative is the brainchild of Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung and Vodafone.

"The LiMo Foundation, through a fair and balanced contribution and participation process, will focus primarily on the joint development of a competitive Linux-based mobile platform, built around a common source code

tree that can adapt to ever evolving market requirements around the world," said a statement issued as part of the launch announcement.

The new foundation's board of directors will include foundation chairman, Greg Besio from Motorola and vice chair, Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DoCoMo.

"Motorola is a firm believer in the power of open platforms and the promise of Linux for mobile," Besio said when the consortium first announced its intention to create a foundation in June last year.

"As such, we are very pleased to be part of this new, coordinated group effort to accelerate the creation of a universal, mobile Linux platform which we believe will unleash the tremendous innovation opportunities for developers, device makers, operators and consumers alike."

"DoCoMo believes continuously improving performance and reducing handset costs are vital goals for operators," Nagata said in June last year.

"DoCoMo strongly supports this foundation's activities of specifying APIs and enabling powerful tools for application and middleware developers. This will ensure the creation of an ecosystem to achieve our goals."

The aims of the LiMo foundation are very similar to those of the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum which launched in November 2005 with the aim of promoting the development and deployment of applications and services on Linux phones through standardisation.

The founding members of LiPS are ARM, Cellon, Esmertec, France Telecom/Orange, FSM Labs, Huawei, Jaluna, MIZI Research, MontaVista Software, Open-Plug and PalmSource.