The LiMo Foundation, Android’s chief competitor in the mobile open-source community, today announced eight new members, including Verizon Wireless, along with leading South Korean network operator SK Telecom and Mozilla Corp., parent of the Firefox Web browser.
Like Google’s Open Handset Alliance, which promotes the Android platform, LiMo is a global consortium of mobile communications firms creating a cell phone platform based on open-source Linux.
LiMo’s eight new members bring its number to 40, surpassing OHA’s 34. More than 60 companies have signed on to LiMo or OHA. Nokia and Microsoft, along with Apple and Research In Motion, which makes Blackberry smart phones, have yet to join either coalition.
Verizon is the prize catch. The No. 2 U.S. operator made the decision following four to five months of discussions. Verizon will support the LiMo platform on its current cellular network and its new 700 MHz network, won in a recent FCC auction. Mozilla’s participation in LiMo is interesting, because it’s likely that browsers will play an integral role in mobile phones.
Established in January 2007 by a consortium of handset giants (Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile, Samsung and Vodafone), LiMo predates Google’s OHA by 10 months, explains Forbes. Both want to have a Linux-based platform to help their developers speed new phones and applications to market.
No commercial Android handsets currently exist, though at least one will debut before the end of the year, according to Google. In February, LiMo announced 18 handsets from LG, Motorola, NEC, Panasonic and Samsung. More phones are expected this fall, says LiMo executive director Morgan Gillis.
More than 90 percent of PCs run Windows, but the market for cell-phone software is much more fragmented, explains the AP. Windows Mobile and Symbian dominate smart phones. Verizon Wireless uses a system from Qualcomm for most of its phones. Apple created its own software for the iPhone and Google is backing the Open Handset Alliance with the Android platform.
Google’s Android Developer Challenge solicits ideas from developers with the prospect of cash prizes. Instead of a $10 million prize, LiMo will give winners “special access and support.” Winners will be announced in mid-September at the Open Source in Mobile (OSiM) conference in Berlin.
LiMo is preparing to release a suite of software development kits in three different flavors (Native, Java and Webkit). Gillis hopes the multiprong approach will net a broader group than Android. LiMo is drafting an “open-source policy” that will explain how to work with LiMo and the foundation’s value as a partner. The policy will be posted on LiMo’s Website in early July.
Even bigger than the LiMo-OHA rivalry is the burst of activity surrounding mobile Linux, spanning most of the world and every facet of the mobile device. “The tectonic plates within the industry are shifting,” Gillis says.
According the Telecom Magazine, it is estimated the number of cell phone users will continue to grow an average of 54 million a year and reach nearly 900 million by 2013 — in China, alone.
According to global trade body GSM Association, about 80% of cellular users world-wide use the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) technology, or 2,571 million people. The second largest mobile technology, CDMA had 421 million users by the end of September, 2007.
Last year, on passing 2 billion GSM users, the GSM Association said China was the largest single GSM market in the world. India has become the second largest cellular market in the world. India’s wireless subscriber count surpassed that of the 256 million wireless subscriber base in the U.S. in April, 2008.
This year, worldwide mobile telephone subscriptions reached 3.3 billion — equivalent to half the global population, according to research firm Informa.
