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Feb. 10, 2009

The LiMo Foundation continues to make waves. Today it has announced updates to its open source platform, has appointed six new wireless operators to deliver mobile handsets and has even added two new directors to its executive board.

Wireless operators NTT DoCoMo, Orange, SK Telecom, Telefonica, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone all said they are fully committed to specify and deliver mobile handsets using the LiMo Platform implementations in 2009.

Officials from SK Telecom and Telefonica have also been added people to the foundation’s board of directors.

Morgan Gillis, the foundation’s executive director, said the commitment from the 6 mobile operators demonstrates that the platform is delivering a highly efficient, consistent and flexible code base to meet the requirements of major wireless providers.

The LiMo foundation’s progress is being announced as the organization plans to showcase its handsets and toolkits at Mobile World Congress, which will be held Feb. 17 in Barcelona, Spain.

“Overall, this also signals substantial growth and opportunity for open source developers in the mobile and wireless market to create devices and communications applications that fully meet the needs of major mobile operators,” he said.

The LiMo foundation is backing Linux as its faces competition from other open device platform initiatives that include Google’s Android operating system and Nokia’s Symbian OS.

The foundation said technologies specified for the release of the LiMo platform have been contributed on time and officials are hopeful this will result in mobile devices and applications hitting the market faster.

Along with submitting all various specifications, LiMo members introduced reference implementations that include features such as advanced multimedia, location-based services utilizing GPS technology, device management and enhanced security.

Some of the contributors include Access Co., Azingo Technology, LG Electronics, Purple Labs and Samsung Electronics.

“Overall, the LiMo Reference Implementations will cut the time to market for LiMo devices while providing ample scope for deep customization at the user interface and applications layers,” Gillis said.

The LiMo Foundation, which is pushing an open-source Linux operating system for mobile handsets has also announced that it endorses the 'OMTP BONDI' specification and that it expects future handsets using a Web runtime to support the BONDI specifications.

Over the past two years, it became apparent that the future direction and success of the mobile Internet could be harmed without a concerted effort to drive a standardized approach to how web applications access the key local capabilities on mobile devices.

If Internet applications had to use different APIs on different devices and platforms, then development of Web applications which work on any mobile device wouldn't happen as easily.

Also, the overall risk of malicious Internet applications having free access to local mobile capabilities was unacceptable, so a need to create some form of additional security layer to protect the user from harm was essential.

In a nutshell, this is basically what OMTP BONDI technology offers to mobile users and wireless developers that build mobile applications that interface with the Web.

The foundation also selected Wind River as the systems integrator to deliver the common infrastructure, developer tools, test equipment and integration services for the LiMo platform.

The LiMo foundation chose the BONDI specification because it creates a common interface for applications and handset functionality.

With BONDI, Web developers will be able to write wireless and mobile applications that run on all cell phones and smartphones that implement LiMo Web time, the group said.

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Source: The LiMo Foundation.