However, it may be a while before such a solution gets released in the wild

Dec 8, 2009 11:33 GMT  ·  By
VMware Fusion (desktop virtualization app) logo on an iPhone's screen - mockup
   VMware Fusion (desktop virtualization app) logo on an iPhone's screen - mockup

Srinivas Krishnamurti, VMware’s head of mobile phone virtualization, tells Computerworld that the company plans more than just dual booting smartphones into different OSes. VMWare, an expert in desktop computer virtualization solutions, projects that it’ll have such a solution for smartphones by 2012. Microsoft, however, believes there is no demand for this product.

The goal is to run both a private and work operating system and profile at the same time, according to VMware’s Krishnamurti. “We don’t think dual booting will be good enough – we’ll allow you to run both profiles at the same time and be able to switch between them by clicking a button,” he said. “You’ll be able to get and make calls in either profile – work or home – as they will both be live at any given point in time.”

According to the Computerworld report, the virtualization expert has successfully demonstrated that Android and Windows Mobile can run side by side on a smartphone packing at least 128MB or RAM. The same spec can be found even on a first-generation iPhone. However, 256MB of RAM would likely be the recommended spec, for production, VMware said. “We don’t think that CPU, memory or capacity will be an issue for running two operating systems,” Krishnamurti added. In 2012, such amounts of RAM may be considered feeble on a smartphone.

“A couple of the paradigms we are working with is to have multiple screens you can switch between to run your apps, and for calls we think you may have different ring tones set up for home or work,” he shared. “For apps you just click a button to go to Facebook or to go to your customer list, or we could just munge them all next together, except when you click on it, it opens and runs in a different virtual machine.”

Microsoft’s vision, however, differs completely from that of VMware. Zane Adam, Microsoft’s head of virtualization, said, “I have seen all the scenarios [for phone virtualization] but customers aren’t asking us; we’re [not] seeing the demand.” “When we see enough demand from the market that it can be massively adopted, that's where Microsoft comes in; so we can drive that adoption. To date we haven’t seen that,” he explained.

Adam foresees issues with the quality of the user experience in the smartphone segment. “As a mobile device user, do I want multiple different devices loading on your phone? The user experience changes with every mobile device and the features are different,” he said. “I’m tied to my mobile device because my email an everything is tied to my mobile device, every time I change operating system profiles I’m getting different information on my email and all my contacts. It makes me extremely less productive.”

“And if I’m on Windows Mobile, then it’s because I made the choice to be on Windows Mobile, and if I’m on Android I’ve made that choice to be on Android… If you look globally and ask how many operators are looking at putting virtualization across their handsets – it’s still too early in the phase. That’s not to say that we aren’t keeping an eye on it,” Adam stressed.