14 DAY TRIAL // The OS market for mobile phones it is still an affair between Symbian, Microsoft and proprietary operating system. But Linux has all the arguments to support the complexity required by mobile phones. The mobile industry has began to search an alternative for consecrated operating systems and Linux may be a major beneficiary.
The first company that has been involved launching phones with Linux as OS is Motorola which brought the first Linux phone to the market in 2003.
A good choice, because the company is expecting to introduce between eight and ten new Linux phones in 2005, according to the Taiwanese daily newspaper DigiTimes, representing more than 25 percent of the company's planned introductions for the year.
But the impact of Linux on the mobile phones being sold in US is close to zero. Motorola is don't given up and the company hopes that with Model E680, a heavily multimedia-oriented device, will conquer the American market.
Trolltech, the provider of Qtopia development environment and graphical user interface used by many Linux mobile phone makers, is another company which think that Linux is the future OS of choice in the filed of mobility.
Earlier this month, Trolltech CEO Haavard Nord told LinuxDevices.com that 2005 would be a "breakout" year for Linux mobile phones and predicted that over twenty new devices were on the way, representing a new market "surge" for Linux handsets.
Actually Trolltech has collaborated on a reference design for a 3G Linux smartphone. The other partners are Samsung Electronics, Infineon Technologies and Emuzed.
For Nokia, the raising of Linux as OS for mobile phones is not a very good news, the implication of company in Symbian (Nokia holds a major stake) being a known fact.