SevenClick! Mobile Technology Evangelists

LiMo Foundation, which was announced one year ago, has increased its list of members with 5 new members, Acrodea, ETRI, Huawei, Purple Labs, and Trolltech. Obviously, the most significant ones are Trolltech and Huawei.

Trolltech is the company behind the Qtopia Greenphone, which was discontinued several months ago, Linux based phone. This company is also behind one of the most used Linux Application Frameworks, QTopia, based on the famous QT framework. Don’t worry if you don’t understand the last wording, it’s just developer stuff.

Huawei is currently one of the most successful Chinese hardware manufacturers. Among their products we can find USB 3G and HSDPA modems, GSM network hardware, HSDPA Data cards, etc..

With these new members, LiMo foundation receives a breath of fresh air, and becomes a powerful alternative to Android and the Open Handset Alliance.

Anyway, LiMo started its operations one year and a half ago, despite it was announced one year ago, but no results have been disclosed yet. Android, in its part have already presented a reference architecture and an SDK, and the first devices are expected to be released late this year. The war is going to be tough and dirty. Oh, Do you know that NTT DoCoMo belongs to both organizations?

Link LiMo Press Note

LIPS forum has just published the first release of their Linux standard for mobile phones. LIPS forum members include Orange, France Telecom and Montavista, among others. This release includes the following specs

• LiPS Reference Model
• Telephony
• Messaging
• Calendaring and Scheduling
• Presence
• User Interface Services
• Address Book
• Voice Call

LIPS, Open Handset Alliance and LIMO are three organizations working with the goal of standardizing mobile Linux to avoid fragmentation. As LIPS Forum mentions in the press release “In contrast to recent announcements from other bodies promoting Linux-based mobile software, LiPS output targets interoperability through real open standards and specifications, not de facto acceptance of single platform implementation.” LIPS and LIMO share a similar vision consisting of the creation of a common interface shared by different Linux implementations in order to gain interoperability and application compatibility.

Several thoughts come into my mind. First of all, we have at least three organizations trying to reduce Linux fragmentation. Doens’t it provoke more fragmentation? Moreover, LIMO and LIPS are working in a very similar way. So, Why don’t they work together in a single specification?

Finally, any specification needs a reference implementation and subsequent commercial products implementing it in order to succed. If LIPS forum specs are not implemented in real products, they will be surely forgotten.  Oh, none of the biggest Hardware manufacturers is a LIPS Forum member. Significant and risky.

Link LIPS Forum

It’s been only a couple of days since Google announced its Open Handset Allianced and the software platform they promote (Android). Since that time, the position of many important actors on the movility scene has been reviewed and commented all over the blogosphere and other specialized media.

Maybe one of the most expected reactions was Nokia’s, the current leader of handsets manufacturer, out of OHA. They say that Android is not a threat for Nokia and they leave an open door in order to join the alliance later.

A very easy position - and logical -, after all. By now, the market share of all Mobile Linux handsets are too low to worry Nokia, so they don’t feel the need to embrace such a platform. On the other hand, Nokia is currently shifting its strategy trying to focus on service delivering from its position of ‘only’ handset manufacturer. So that, if Android eventually starts to grow in acceptance, for sure they will join the OHA if Nokia thinks this platform will help them to provide richer services, more integrated with their own handsets.

The position of Mobile Linux initiative, driven by Vodafone, DoCoMo and others, is more exciting. While Android will boost interest in mobile Linux, LiMo will become its natural enemy. Others today ongoing Linux projects, like OpenMoko or Qtopia would be in a similar position.

We’ve found here, an interesting related analysis on this topic. Time will tell who wins the battle.

And, of course, another point of interest is carriers position. It’s clear that Android is opposite to walled-garden trends embraced by major carriers up to the moment. So that, many people thinks OHA is an initiative against that so conservative carriers.

In fact, Telefonica and T-Mobile are the only global carriers joining OHA by now, though many other big ones would be studying the case, like Verizon who would this way answer back AT&T deals with Apple.

Link MocoNews

Trollthech announced past week that the entire inventory of Greenphones had been sold out, and they don’t expect to order new handsets. Trolltech claims to have accomplished its goal of encouraging and stimulating the open Linux-based handset market, as they have provided with the world’s first open phone.

From now on, Trolltech will focus on its roots as a software company and its Qtopia platform, that seems to count with a very important partnert, none other than Motorola. Anyway, they will continue supporting current Greenphone users with software releases.

For those who are interested on acquiring an open Linux-based phone, Trolltech recommends OpenMoko innitiave and its Neo1973 handset.

Via EngadgetMobile
Link Trolltech

As TrollTech claims in its website, “Motorola has initially chosen Qtopia Core as the foundation for its E680 and A780 mobile phones”. These would be the latest in a series of handsets that Motorola is building on the Trolltech/Linux platform.

According to these news, Qtopia Core would be gaining momentum on the Motorola’s Linux platform scenario, Motorola announced its new Linux-based platform, MOTOMAGX, a couple of months ago.

Motorola is for sure the manufacturer that has made the most determined bid on Linux, as they had already released some line-up of handsets based on JUIX (an in house developed Linux+Java platform), Qtopia (by TrollTech) and MOTOMAGX.

MOTOMAGX seems to be an evolution of JUIX and could evolve to include Qtopia as its core.

Via EngadgetMobile
Link TrollTech

At HTC’s 10 year anniversary celebration, Peter Chou, company’s CEO, talked about the successful partnership with Microsoft and the issues involving a Linux-based handset.

HTC has been working together with Microsoft for 10 years and was one of the major contributors to the 12 million units sold of Windows Mobile in the previous fiscal year.

But despite the great success of this alliance, HTC keeps an eye on lastest developments in Linux technology, tough as he stated: “it remains a great challenge to transfer Linux-concepts into a product for commercial production because the Linux industry lacks a long-term cooperation partner, such as Microsoft”.

The need of such a partner would be justified since they help integrate all parts and components together, noting that if only the core software is available, then, handset makers have to integrate all other functions such as multimedia playback, Internet browser, and messaging by themselves with tremendous R&D costs.

Via EngadgetMobile

Miguel de Icaza is a genius. Beating for a Linux Port of Microsoft .NET has been a risky business from the beginning. Mono Project has faced the opposition of Linux world against Microsoft, but it has finally managed to survive. And not only survive, as Novell is currently supporting the project.

Finally, Microsoft has realized that Linux is not the enemy, but another business opportunity. An example of this is the last announcement made by Microsoft and Novell: Silverlight will have a Linux version based on Mono named MoonLight. Moreover, it will also have browser plugin versions for Silverlight for Firefox, targeting Windows, Mac and Linux.

Via Bitelia

Link Miguel de Icaza’s blog Microsoft PressPass