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Study: Financial Squeeze Pressuring Mobile Manufacturers to Use Linux

By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 10:24 AM

LinuxThe LiMo foundation welcomed lots of new members today, and according to recent research, it’s due in a large part to economic conditions favouring a license-free operating system.

“There are multiple factors driving the growth of the market for Linux in mobile handsets. In the current economy, the need to manage costs has pushed OEMs and operators toward the potential licensing and royalty savings available with Linux,” commented IMS Research analyst Chris Schreck. “At the same time, consolidation in the Linux market and work by standards groups like the LiMo Foundation, Open Mobile Terminal Platform, the Open Handset Alliance, and the Open Mobile Alliance have gone a long way to remove the fragmentation that had hindered market growth. The end result is a mobile market driven to Linux to save on development costs and a Linux developer community more capable of meeting that demand than ever before.”

Android, something riding considerable popularity right now, is a prime example of a successful Linux-based OS, and Palm’s WebOS has also shown that Linux still has more than a few tricks tucked away.

[via IMS]

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About The Author

Simon Sage

Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.

  • forever4now

    I would hope in the future, the Linux portion of the various mobile platforms would converge. After all, the hardware will essentially be the same and that is what the OS manages.

    In terms of the application framework above it, it seems conceivable that there could be an Android stack, a LiMo stack, a Pre stack and even a Blackberry or Symbian stack.

    Essentially, the “community” would share in the development/support of the OS, simplifying the lives of the component vendors (few drivers, etc.), while the stacks above would allow the device vendors to differentiate their products.