Forum to standardize Linux phones
As many as eleven corporations joined hands on Monday to form an alliance called Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) forum which intends to promote the acceptance of Linux in fixed, mobile and converged devices.
Founder members of the forum include PalmSource, France Telecom/Orange, FSM Labs, Huawei, Jaluna, MontaVista Software, MIZI Research, Open Plug, Arm, Cellon and Esmertec; an amalgamation of operators, device manufacturers, silicon and software vendors.
The main objective of LiPS (Linux Phone Standard) Forum will be to make Linux a more standardized, and interoperable mobile phone OS similar to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile Smartphone OS, but having better flexibility at a comparatively economical price.
LiPS revealed they will begin working on the plan of having a solitary device courtesy which you can make calls on fixed and mobile networks or across the Internet.
If that happens, the mobile operators can be rest assured that the service options they want to give to their consumers will be consistent on most phones.
As of now embedded Linux is seen as more flexible, but not totally complete. On the other hand, Microsoft and Symbian come with integrated off-the-shelf mobile phone stacks including kernel, libraries, multimedia and even graphical branding elements. Further, both Windows Mobile and Symbian have good third-party software ecosystems.
In contrast, Linux mobile phones, have better branding and differentiation opportunities, and also avoid vendor lock-in which is a prominent feature on the list of mobile carriers and phone vendors. As of now, Linux on mobile phones necessitates carriers and device vendors to assemble and check their own phone software piles.
Also, the variety of options present for graphics environments, C libraries, PIM, service provisioning schemes, etc., mean that the resultant Linux phone stacks fall short of interoperability. This has thwarted the materialization of a third-party software and services ecosystem which can be compliant with Linux mobile phones.
Michael Kelley, senior vice president engineering PalmSource, says that joining the LiPS Forum exhibits their faith in Linux's potential and also their aim to further improve the reach of Linux.
Haila Wang, president of the LiPS Forum believes that Linux can be a highly successful replacement for proprietary operating systems and that by standardising the Linux-based system services and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), it will be possible to make simpler the manufacturing of fully functional Linux phones, at the same time seeing to it that they cater to the operator needs as well as enhance the consumer appeal.
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