14 DAY TRIAL // Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone have announced their intention to establish the world's first global, open Linux-based software platform for mobile devices.
A world-class Linux-based platform aims to provide key benefits for the mobile industry including lower development costs, increased flexibility, and a richer mobile ecosystem - all of those contributing to the group's ultimate objective of creating compelling, differentiated and enhanced consumer experiences.
To help guide these efforts, the companies are also announcing their intent to form an independent foundation. The founder companies' objective is to realize the development of the platform based through the contributions of all interested stakeholders through an open and transparent process.
Once established, the foundation aims to provide an API specification, architecture, references to open source code, new source code-based reference implementation components (to be developed and committed by foundation members) and specifications for referenced third party software. The foundation also plans to provide a test suite to assess and demonstrate product conformance to the platform specification.
While the initial foundation members plan on being primarily responsible for delivering the development of the first reference implementation of the mobile operating platform, they will also actively encourage membership participation of other companies committed to its development. More information about how others can join the foundation will be made available at later on.