Mobile Leaders Announce the Launch of the LiMo Foundation

Mobile industry leaders Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone announced the official launch of the LiMo Foundation, with the goal of creating the world's first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices.

A non-profit organization, the LiMo Foundation is aimed at combining the community-based development benefits of transparency, innovation and scalability with the best development practices from the mobile community to create an innovative new business model. Overseen by a Board of Directors comprising representatives from the founding member companies including Foundation Chairman, Greg Besio of Motorola and Vice Chair, Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DoCoMo, the LiMo Foundation will be seeking new members interested in participating in the development of a set of APIs, architecture, and contributing source code for the common components of the Linux based mobile platform. Foundation members will be available to discuss membership opportunities at the upcoming 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 12-15, 2007.

The LiMo Foundation will focus primarily on the joint development of a competitive Linux-based mobile platform, built around a common source code tree that can adapt to ever evolving market requirements around the world. In addition, members will also work on the following:

- Establishment of safeguards to minimize fragmentation;
- Collaboration on a mobile Linux developer ecosystem;
- Cooperation with existing industry organizations;
- Securing new members from across the industry: device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, independent software vendors, integrators and third party developers.

Additional information about the LiMo Foundation can be found here.