The LiMo Foundation has just announced that it is currently on schedule to release its LiMo platform and API’s in March 2008. The LiMo Platform—leveraging standards and open-source projects—is a modular, plug-in-based, hardware-independent architecture built around an open operating system, with a secure run-time environment for support of downloaded applications.

LiMo’s initial Founder members—Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone—collaborated on Release 1 (R1).

“The LiMo Platform is being readied by mobile leaders working in unison to deliver an open handset platform for use by the whole industry,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation. “The first release of the LiMo Platform combines technologies already extensively market proven within an array of leading handsets. This will enable initial LiMo handsets to register in the marketplace far more rapidly than handsets based on unproven technology. In addition, we are now making the platform APIs freely available to the public in order to begin the widespread engagement of developer talent and innovation that will shape the new mobile consumer experiences of tomorrow.”

Third-party developers will use LiMo’s API specifications—available in beta form immediately at www.limofoundation.org—to build new applications that deliver next-generation consumer experiences across a tremendous, stable base of globally deployed mobile devices. Middleware components for the LiMo Platform can be implemented in either C or C++ programming languages.

LiMo’s technology will be showcased in Booth 8b135, Hall 8 at the Mobile World Congress, next week in Barcelona.